A Flight of Fantasy
by Serri
Summary: This is a Starfleet Academy story, about a collection of students, various Trill, Vulcans, Andorians, Betazoids, Terrans--and hey, throw in an eventual Section 31 plot, time travel, and telepathy, and you get the general idea.
1. Default Chapter

Author's Note:  This is a story about various odd persons attending Starfleet Academy.  While this takes place in the pre-made_ Star Trek universe, most of the characters are original creations.  Well . . . kind of original, they're based after real people, but only partially.  This is a joint story effort with the author Jaeryn, so if you see some similar stories under Jaeryn's name, now you know why.  Anyway, I try to stay true to the "rules" outlined in the __Star Trek series, but I will contract some of the books (gee, they contradict themselves).  On the other hand, some of the books brought really cool information and mythology out about various planets, specifically Vulcan, so I do borrow some of the historicity from extra-series material . . . and some stuff I happily make up.  Oh, and I like 'what ifs' so if its seems overly philosophical and theoretical at times, I think that sort of thing is fun so I write about it.  Consider this your warning.  And the various philosophies and opinions the characters espouse are not necessarily my own—in fact, most of the time, they aren't._

Time:  After _Voyager got chucked into the Delta Quadrant, but before __First Contact and the start of the Dominion War._

Title:  A Flight of Fancy

Chapter 1

            Ayuiij ch'Ishima was bored.  Although Ayuiij had been on Earth for several weeks, this was the first day of classes at Starfleet Academy.  She had just begun to adjust to the differences between Andor and Earth.  Earth was a little bit cooler, had a weaker gravitational field, and was, on the whole, brighter than Andor.  That was the most disconcerting thing—the light.  Earth obsessed over light.  There was light everywhere.  The Terrans cities were so bright and colorful that one could see the lights from space.  In addition, one couldn't get a proper view of the stars unless she traveled out to the country to get it.  Terrans also seemed to have a sort of obsession with candles and lamps.  Ayuiij's roommate at the Academy, Kali Samsara insisted upon burning a little votive candle that smelled specifically of "sun-ripened raspberry".  Of course, Kali had very hesitantly and nicely asked if Ayuiij minded if she burned the candle in their room.  Ayuiij had responded with a grunt.  Kali had hesitated again, so Ayuiij said she didn't mind.  And truly, Ayuiij didn't mind—she just didn't see the point.  If Kali wanted to smell raspberries—whatever they were—why didn't she go out and get some raspberries?  Why did she have to burn a noxious little candle?  

            But the Terrans were pretty boring themselves.  They weren't as boring as the Trill, and the Trill weren't as boring as the Vulcans—only the Borg could top the Vulcans in that department—but they were boring.  To add to that, everyone was quiet, too, and far too pacifistic for Ayuiij's taste.  Also, the whole lot of them were boring, pallid colors—no one had the curving antennae, striking powdery blue skin, white hair, and predatory yellow eyes of an Andorian.  Granted, the yellow eyes and the darker skin tone were unusual for most Andorians as well, but humans generally didn't come in interesting colors.  Ayuiij had to admit the spots of a Trill were unusual and therefore interesting, and Vulcan ears held promise, but mostly aliens were physically uninteresting.  Of course, Ayuiij found the concept of telepathic species like Vulcans and Betazoids fascinating, but she had yet to meet one that wouldn't put her to sleep in a prolonged conversation.  On a whole, the students at the Academy seemed to lack spice.  At first, Ayuiij had thought she was to be spared additional boredom with Kali as her roommate, but she was wrong.  Kali had shown a hint of being interesting because she seemed to have an inordinate obsession with small Terran animals known as penguins.  Ayuiij didn't know what the little creatures were, but they were kind of cute, and the fact that Kali had about twenty of them, all shapes and sides, foretold that Kali was a trifle odd.  Ayuiij was incredibly strange for an Andorian, let alone a Terran, so "a trifle odd" showed some promise.

            Unfortunately, Kali seemed to be deathly afraid of Ayuiij.  At first, Ayuiij was confused by this fear, but, by now she didn't care anymore.  Perhaps if she weren't bored, she would care a little more.  So, Ayuiij retreated to her tested and true method of alleviating boredom.  She was going to annoy people, and, if possible, scare them.  Scaring was better—Ayuiij had discovered that most humanoids made humorous noises when they were scared.  Ayuiij decided that she would target Kali for terror first.  After all, they were in the same room—it would take little energy and probably ensure maximum results.

            Ayuiij had been laying flat on her bed.  From her supine position, she could see her slightly curved, double-bladed Andorian Spiritsword hanging on the wall behind her desk.  Tiny bits of light glanced off the sword's sheathed blade and made random patterns upon the walls.  The rooms of Starfleet cadets were all the same—small and boring.  Ayuiij could not wait until her junior year at the academy—then she could get an apartment in nearby San Francisco or Oakland.  _Or, Ayuiij supposed__, as long as I get myself a transporter, I can live in Australia if I wanted to.  Kali's side of the room was exactly like Ayuiij's.  Bed, desk, drawer—boring.  _

Now, Ayuiij rocked forward and stood up on her bed with the silence and speed native to her people.  She positioned herself so her body was angled toward Kali.  She stared in Kali's direction and crossed her eyes.  Then, as an afterthought, she began to growl, steadily increasing in volume.

            At first, Kali did not seem to notice Ayuiij at all—then, she looked up at her, and could not stop an expression of alarm from quickly crossing her features.  Ayuiij was already tall, almost six feet in height, and she was standing onto of her bed, which was over two feet in height, so she seemed very tall and imposing to Kali, who was sitting at her desk.  It didn't help that it was a little bit after dusk and the only light on in the room came from Kali's computer screen.  "What are you doing?"  Kali asked, her voice automatically going up in pitch.

            "What do you care?"  Ayuiij snarled back while inwardly forcing herself not to break out into laughter.

            "Uh . . ." Kali stammered, her wariness increasing by the moment.

            _Success! Ayuiij thought.  "Are you afraid of me?"  Ayuiij demanded in a low, menacing voice.  Ayuiij could now feel the Terran's fear.  Andorian antennae picked up useful things, including increases in biochemical or bioelectrical impulses.  Right now, Ayuiij could guess that Kali's adrenaline gland was going haywire._

            "Uh . . . I wasn't, but now I am," Kali said, in her discomfiture, blurting out the truth.

            "Why?"  Ayuiij snapped, putting on a convincing facsimile of anger.

            "Well, right now you look like you're going to eat me."

            It only took a split second for a reply to formulate in Ayuiij's mind.  "You Terrans are wonderfully perceptive, you know."

            An instant flash of understanding arched across Kali's face.  "Oh, dear," she muttered.  Ayuiij then imitated a noise that another of the Earth creatures, a dog, customarily makes.  Correspondingly, Kali's eyes widened in shock and she bolted for the door.

            As soon as the doors whisked shut behind Kali, Ayuiij collapsed on top of her bed in a massive fit of giggles.  "Works every time," she gasped out loud to herself.  She laughed herself nearly sick for about ten minutes, and she began plotting to find her next victim.

            About a half an hour later, when Ayuiij was trying to decide whether or not to seek out Kali and pretend to stalk her, or choose another victim at random, the doors whisked open again.  This time, a short, thin human appeared.  She looked over at Ayuiij who was sitting on the bed, staring at her in silence.  The girl had sharp gray-green eyes and appeared far more confident than Kali.  "Hi," she said in a voice devoid of enthusiasm and bordering on the intensely impatient and annoyed.  She folded her arms across her chest and announced: "You're Ayuiij ch'Ishima, I'm Yoshi Tamakari, and guess what?  When people try to eat me, I bite back."  She smiled brightly—even that seemed to hold a note of sarcasm.  "I'm your new roommate."

            Delighted by this introduction, Ayuiij laughed out loud, visibly startling Yoshi.  Yoshi's eyes narrowed.  "Ah—you told her that just so you could scare the crap out of her and laugh your butt off."

            "Yeah," Ayuiij admitted as she laughed.  "What can I say?  I was bored."  A flicker of a smile crossed Yoshi's face, then disappeared.

            "You know, thanks to you I have to move all of Kali's stuff for her 'cause she too scared to come back here."

            "Let me keep one of the . . . penguins," Ayuiij implored.

            "Why?"

            "So I can torture her with the knowledge that I have one of her beloved animals," Ayuiij replied.  Seeing the refusal on Yoshi's face, she quickly added: "Think of it as revenge for making you move all of her things."  

            Both of Yoshi's eyebrows rose in consideration of that.  "Kay!" she agreed enthusiastically.

            "Kay?"  Ayuiij repeated, confusion passing over her almost sky-blue features.

            "Short for 'okay'," Yoshi translated.  Yoshi made an exasperated noise at Ayuiij's further incomprehension.  "Which means 'yes', or 'alright', or 'okalie-dokalie' or—"

            "_Okay, I get the point," Ayuiij said, emphasizing the first word clearly.  "You don't have much in the patience department, do you?  I'd like to see you try Andorian!"_

            Yoshi stared at her for a long moment, then gave a derisive bark of laughter, "HA!"

            "That's what I thought," Ayuiij said smugly.  Then her lips stretched into a smile.  Yoshi Takamari seemed anything but boring and docile.  With any luck, Yoshi would be violent as well, and the two would get along famously.

            "You know," Yoshi added after the two had packed up most of Kali's things and replaced them with Yoshi's, "you would probably like Kali once you got to know her."

            "It's not that I hate her or anything," Ayuiij said, punctuating her with the useful shrug she had picked up from humans, "she's just boring."

            Yoshi rolled her eyes impatiently.  "Boring?  How is she boring?  Compared to a lot of the other kids running around here, she's absolutely intriguing.  And in comparison with everybody here at the Academy, the rest of the youthful population here on Earth is a black hole of interest."

            "Black hole?"  Ayuiij queried.  "You mean a black _star, a quantum singularity?"_

            "Sure," Yoshi replied noncommittally.  

            Ayuiij growled.  "You Terrans are so geo-centric.  Only humans say "black holes"—the rest of the galaxy calls them by their proper name."

            "Proper names are boring," Yoshi shot back.  Then her eyes lit in challenge.  "Hey—wormholes are 'quantum singularities' too, so, there—how would you know the difference if I used the 'proper' words?"

            Ayuiij made a grunting noise, acknowledging her point.  "Anyway," Yoshi said, "I have been working on a little something to annoy my roommate—former roommate.  Care to help out?"

            "Yes," Ayuiij replied instantaneously, "what is it?"

            "It's a little something that Kali is pretty good at too—satire."

            "'Satire'?  I do not know this word in Federation Standard," Ayuiij replied.

            "Uh . . . it's making fun of something using exaggeration, understatement, sarcasm, or a combination of the three."

            "That's right up my alley," Ayuiij said, voice gleeful.

            Yoshi stopped her with a glare.  "How do you know expressions like 'up my alley' and not 'okay'."

            "I've read a few books in Federation Standard—I had to look up colloquialisms in the dictionary.  They're fun, so I try to use as many as possible."

            "Ah," Yoshi said in understanding.  "So, my roommate's a Vulcan—"

            "Vulcans are boring."

            "Vulcans _are boring," Yoshi agreed.  "At least all the ones I've ever met are—I haven't exactly met this one yet."_

            "Wait a minute," Ayuiij said, her hope rising; she grabbed Yoshi's arms in delight.  "Are you telling me you are already planning to annoy someone you've never met?"

            "Well," Yoshi said, not seeming embarrassed at all, "yeah, what else am I supposed to do in my free time?"

            "Yes!"  Ayuiij exalted.  "I have found the perfect roommate.  We can devise our evil schemes together.  Please, continue!"

            "That sentence does not require an interjection _or an exclamation point, and if someone were writing this down, they would have used both," Yoshi grumbled as she shook out of Ayuiij's grip.  "So Kali knows a lot about Vulcan philosophy—she went two years ago for a few months.  She can tell us enough about it so we can come up with something.  Then," here Yoshi paused, and rubbed her hands together, her eyes lighting up in unmistakable mischievous glee.  She knelt down by one of her packs and pulled out a black rectangular solid.  She tapped a control on the side, and a compartment opened to show a small computer keypad.  She then depressed the top of the solid and a lid-like feature popped up, revealing another metallic surface.  Upon further examination, Ayuiij could see that the surface had upon it a circular pattern of some sort._

            "This," Yoshi announced triumphantly, "is a transporter.  I programmed the matter/energy converter and assembled it myself."

            Ayuiij stared at her in amazement.  "Does it work?"

            "It still has a few bugs," Yoshi admitted.  "I wouldn't put your pet hamster in there, but I could deliver Kali's penguins to her."  Yoshi frowned.  "I would probably have to do it one at a time—this thing won't carry something more than 20 kilograms."

            "I don't have a pet hamster."

            Yoshi sighed exasperatedly.  "I know.  The Academy doesn't allow pets, of course you don't have one."

            "Then why did you say that?"

            "If you are going to live among humans, you need to realize that we say some pretty useless things sometimes.  And other times we speak metaphorically."  Yoshi frowned and glared at the mini-transporter sitting in front of her.  "I hate metaphors," she muttered.

            Ayuiij wisely chose to ignore that last statement.  "So what does a transporter have to do with anything?"  Yoshi shot a miffed look at her, displeased at Ayuiij lack of overwhelming enthusiasm.

            "We're going to use the transporter to deliver our satire right to my roommate.  After she sets up her stuff, we can have Kali give us the coordinates of her desk or something.  Beam it right there—she'll never know how it got there."

            Ayuiij frowned at that.  "But she's a Vulcan, right?  They're supposed to be all logical and everything.  She knows that things don't just appear.  Won't she think of transportation?"

            "Maybe," Yoshi replied.  "But students don't have access to the transporters here—unless it is an emergency like a fire or something, then the emergency protocols will allow students to operate the transporters.  So she will never be able to find out what happened, or at least, who did it."

            "I like it," Ayuiij pronounced gleefully.  "When can we begin?"

            "Unfortunately, not now.  I've got the plan, but I don't really know anything useful or fun about Vulcan philosophy, so I'll have to wait until Kali can come up with something."

            "I don't think it's possible for Vulcan philosophy to be useful or fun," Ayuiij said bluntly.

            "Probably not," Yoshi agreed as she put the mini-transporter on the desk.  "And I wouldn't care if it were, but I meant fun and useful in the sense of being 'bashable'."

            "'Bashable'?"  Ayuiij said, fighting the grin creeping across her face.  "_Bashable?  I know that's not a word."_

            Yoshi shrugged.  "Who cares?  Making up words is fun, and it makes people look at you funny."

            "Ooh . . . something I can add to my list," Ayuiij said, rubbing her hands together excitedly.  So, perhaps she had prejudged Terrans—Yoshi seemed to have enough quirks to be interesting, and she was definitely odd.  _Making up words, I have to try that._

Yoshi gazed at her and raised a skeptical eyebrow.  She didn't even have to say it, Ayuiij knew what she was thinking: _I don't think you have to add anything to your list.            "It's most fun to make up words that are grammatically incorrect and watch your English teacher's head explode," Yoshi added after a moment.  She smiled in what was obviously fond recollection._

Ayuiij gazed at her oddly.  "Do Terrans really do that, or were you speaking metaphorically again?"

"Think about that for half a second and I think you'll figure it out," Yoshi responded sarcastically.  Ayuiij responded with a growling noise that Yoshi promptly ignored.  "Sometimes they do turn red, though."

Ayuiij cocked her head to the side.  "Wait a minute . . . you change colors?"

Yoshi's eyebrows arched again.  "How long have you been on Earth?" 

"Almost a month."

"You've never seen anyone blush?  Their skin turns a little more pink or red—it's actually blood rushing to your face."

"I can't say I've noticed, but I was at the Vulcan Embassy for most of the time and Vulcans don't blush," Ayuiij replied.

"And if they did, they wouldn't be turning red, that's for sure," Yoshi muttered.  Then Yoshi cocked her head to the size and gazed up at Ayuiij's five feet, eleven inch frame.  "The Vulcan Embassy, why were you at the Vulcan Embassy and not the Andorian Embassy?"

"They have better food," Ayuiij replied flatly.

Yoshi made a face.  "That is highly improbable—and I know obfuscation when I hear it." 

_Good, Ayuiij thought__, she isn't dense either.  She knows that I don't want to talk about it.  Ayuiij supposed she should be grateful that her roommate was either apathetic or 'sensitive'—Ayuiij was leaning on the apathetic side—or she would have to explain why she didn't want to talk or even think about Andor.  And that was not a conversation Ayuiij wanted to have.  "Are you using big words on purpose because you don't think I know them in Federation Standard?"_

"Maybe," she replied almost impishly, "and call it English why don't you?  Everybody else does."  She refolded her arms across her chest and shook a finger pointedly at Ayuiij.  "Hey—you have to promise me that you won't scare Kali until she gets to know you better."

"Why?"  Ayuiij asked, unimpressed.

"Because Kali and I actually went to secondary school together, we're friends and it is so not cool having a roommate and a friend that don't get along."  Seeing the lack of response on Ayuiij's light blue features, she continued, her eyes lighting up with an idea.  "Ooh—how about this?  If you make friends with her first, you'll be able to terrify her for the rest of her life, but if you just scare her away, you won't have the same plethora of opportunities."

"Plethora—mhee!"  Ayuiij said delightedly.  "I like it.  So, let's go make friends."

Yoshi rolled her gray-green eyes at Ayuiij's exorbitant extremes of enthusiasm.  "Uh, maybe you should help me bring her stuff down to her new room and you guys can make up or something."

"Does that mean you'll switch back?"  Ayuiij asked, not relishing that notion.

"No—the Academy decided that I was better suited—psychologically—to deal with an insane Andorian."

Ayuiij laughed.  "Yeah . . . but I can't imagine them saying that—everyone here is obnoxiously politically correct."

Yoshi nodded.  "Which is odd, because Starfleet officers are notoriously not politically correct.  Some of them will say anything to anyone."

"Yeah, some Starfleet guy made a crack about how 'the Klingons hate the Romulans and the Romulans hate the Cardassians and the Cardassians hate the Federation and the Federation hates the Dominion—but everybody hates the Ferengi."

Yoshi smiled briefly, then frowned.  "Ten to one we're at war with the Dominion within the next ten years.  All out war, that is."

Ayuiij gave a bark of derisive laughter.  "Ten years?  Try five—or less.  I mean, come on, the Federation has fought with everybody else who has their own empire.  First we fought the Romulans, then the Klingons, then the Cardassians.  Who didn't we fight with?"

"The Vulcans," Yoshi added.  "The Romulan wars happened _before the Federation was founded, so this counts.  The Vulcans had a whole bunch of colonies, but they didn't fight Earth or Andor or Trill."_

"Hello?  Pacifism, remember?"  Ayuiij said.  "Vulcan came up with the whole Prime Directive—we-don't-interfere-with-'lower'-species-development anyway—philosophy."

"It's called IDIC—Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations," Yoshi said smugly.  Then she laughed.  "You now know the sum total of my knowledge about Vulcan."

"Mine too—if the Vulcans are all about diversity, then why are they so stuck-up?"  Ayuiij grumbled.  "My stay at the Embassy was not fun—I don't think my intelligence was ever insulted so many times before in my life."

"It isn't all Vulcans, Kali said she liked her trip to Vulcan.  I think it is just the really smart ones—they're all elitists or something."

"Great, that's just great.  Well, I hope Kali has fun with her new roommate—aren't we supposed to be dragging her stuff over there?"

Without replying, Yoshi went to one of the drawers and opened it.  She proceeded to messily stuff all of Kali's clothes into a duffle bag.  Ayuiij grabbed Kali's uniforms out of the small closet they had oh-so-briefly shared, and tossed them into the bag as well.  They bundled up all of Kali's penguins but one, tossed the candle into a bag and dragged/man-handled Kali's stuff down the corridor.  Unfortunately, Kali's new room was in the westernmost part of the Academy dorms while Ayuiij's and Yoshi's room was in the easternmost part.  Kali's room also happened to be on the third floor.

"Don't these people believe in turbolifts?"  Yoshi asked rhetorically and with a growl.  "And how the heck did they choose where to put the first year students?  How are we on opposite sides of the Academy?"

"I think they spread everyone out so there's an equal number of first, second, third, and fourth students in each of the sections," Ayuiij replied as they began walking down the third floor hallway.  They stopped at room 386.  Yoshi knocked swiftly on the door and it opened to reveal Kali.

Kali instantly looked up at Ayuiij, and, to her credit did not balk, but only looked over to Yoshi.  "So you're here to say, 'She was just messing with your mind, now will you help me undermine the last 100 years of Vulcan-Terran relations?'"

Ayuiij was slightly surprised.  "You _are perceptive," she said, for a moment being serious.  Her opinion of Kali went up a notch._

"Not really," Kali replied with a slightly crooked smile.  "I just know Yoshi pretty well."  She looked at Yoshi with a fair amount of trepidation.  "Too well, _insanely well."_

Yoshi tapped her foot impatiently.  "I'm not getting any younger standing here and my arm's about to fall out—can we come in already?"

"No," Kali said as she stepped aside to let them in.  That caught Ayuiij by surprise and she had to hide a smile.  So Kali did have a sense of humor—she was probably just uneasy around people she didn't know.

"Hey," Ayuiij said, surprising herself with her next words.  "I didn't actually mean to scare you, scare you—I was just bored."

"You know," Kali said, punctuating each word with a mild stab of her finger.  "If it had been someone else and I was watching, I would have probably laughed."

"Ha, ha, then you deserved it," Ayuiij said with a snicker.  Again, to her surprise, Kali laughed as well.  Startled, Ayuiij realized that she might actually fit in at the Academy.  Or, at least, she'd have a couple of people that had something nearing her sense of humor.  Ayuiij also noticed that Kali was still a bit wary of her.  She wondered if Kali were slightly xenophobic, or if it was just Ayuiij.  _It's probably just me, Ayuiij reflected after a moment, __I would scare me too._

"So where's your unfun roommate?"  Yoshi asked brightly.

Kali looked at Yoshi strangely.  "Not here yet . . . the commander said the ship bringing some of the students from Vulcan, Trill, and Betazed was delayed for some reason.  Something about having to return to Trill."

"Maybe they left someone in orbit," Ayuiij commented, then burst into laughter at her own joke.          

Yoshi ignored her with a mildly bemused expression and Kali grinned for a moment, then continued speaking, "Why did you say she was unfun?"

"Hope they don't run into anyone when they come back," Ayuiij said, still chortling.  "Wham!"

"Vulcan," Yoshi replied succinctly to Kali.  She then purposefully caught Ayuiij's gaze and rolled her eyes.

Kali nodded once, but Ayuiij had the impression she was merely acknowledging what Yoshi had to say, not agreeing with it.  "What do you think of Vulcans?"  Ayuiij asked, abruptly calming down.

Kali shrugged noncommittally, but then continued speaking, almost in a rush, "I like Vulcans, they're happy."

"Happy?"  Ayuiij echoed, amused.  She had never encountered that particular view concerning Vulcans.

Yoshi smirked at that.  "Uh, with the whole unemotional thing?  I think the Vulcans would beg to differ."

Kali hesitated again, then spoke: "It's not that they don't have emotions, they just believe in—"

"Repression?"  Ayuiij asked.  "That's unhealthy."

"It's not exactly repression—it's control."

"_Well, most Vulcans I know are pretty __deeply repressed," Yoshi argued.  Then she grinned as Kali groaned in agony._

"What?"  Ayuiij asked, knowing that she missed something.

"Yoshi just made a really horrible pun," Kali said, glaring daggers at her friend.  "The words 'well' and 'deeply'."

"Oh," Ayuiij grunted, then she couldn't help it, she grinned.  "That is terrible," she admitted.  "I hope you come up with more."

"You don't have to worry about that," Yoshi said with a mischievous grin.  "But about those Vulcans . . . so it's not repression, it's denial, and not the river in Egypt."  This time, both Ayuiij and Kali groaned in agony.

"I don't really know how to explain it," Kali confessed, obviously frustrated with herself.  "It's called _cthia or something.  It is supposed to be mastery or control, not repression.  But it's like that's the ideal or something . . . I don't know!  Ask a Vulcan."_

"Yeah, right," Yoshi muttered.  "Like I care that much."

"Like you care about anything that much," Ayuiij shot back.

Kali smirked.  "He-he-he, so Ayuiij knows you almost as well as I do now."

"Hey!" Yoshi said indignantly, "I care about a few things that much."

"Oh really, like what?"  Kali challenged.

"Uh, I would greatly prefer that the world not end.  And I don't much care to be assimilated—the Borg can keep their nanoprobes and ick_-factor to themselves.  And I want to avoid any class on time travel like the plague."_

"Time travel is fun," Kali protested.

"Time travel _is fun—but it makes my brain hurt," Ayuiij said._

            "You know, you guys can sit down," Kali said, gesturing to the two chairs and the two beds in the now sparsely furnished room.  

            "We prefer to stand," Yoshi said as she took a chair and Ayuiij flopped down on the bed.

            Kali gave Ayuiij a look and belatedly said, "The brain does not experience the sensation of pain."

            "Mine does," Ayuiij retorted as Yoshi smiled and Kali gave a long sigh.

            "So, do you have any fun classes?"  Kali asked.  "I wonder if we're in any together?"

            "Fun?" Yoshi echoed.  Kali moved over to the computer at her desk as Yoshi spoke.  "I think I'm taking Computer Programming, Special and General Relativity, Calc 2, Klingonese, and the ones everyone has to take—Lit of the Federation, History of the Alpha Quadrant and the Federation, and Conceptual Temporal Theory, and Navigations."

            "I guess you're majoring in Operations," Ayuiij said.  "And what, minoring in engineering?"

            "Navigations, actually," Yoshi replied.  "None of my classes actually get interesting until next year."

            "I've got a couple fun ones—Molecular Biochemistry, Special and General Relativity, Integrative Biology, Genetic Engineering, and Calc 2," Kali said, reading from the list on her computer screen.

            "That's a lot of classes," Ayuiij muttered.  "I'm looking forward to the self-defense classes.  Apparently they're very hands on."

            "How is this good?"  Kali asked.  "I live in fear of self-defense classes."

            "I'm going into security, so I have to log more hours than you do," Ayuiij said, gazing reflectively out the window.  Ayuiij decided that Kali now had a much better view than Yoshi or Ayuiij did—from her position near the window, she could see the entirety of the Golden Gate Bridge and the sea stretching out into infinity.  "I'm taking Vulcan for my language."

            "So am I, but I already know some, so I am in the second level class," Kali said.

            "How is it that you think Vulcans are so boring, yet you take their language?"  Yoshi demanded. 

            "Are you joking?  Their language is awesome.  The calligraphy is almost like Arabic, but more, uh, vertical.  It looks cool," Ayuiij paused for a moment.  "Aren't we supposed to be thinking up devious plans to undermine Vulcan-Terran relations?"

            Yoshi smiled.  "Vulcan-Terran-_Andorian," she commented.  She turned and raised a pair of expectant eyebrows at Kali.  "So, about that Vulcan philosophy."_

            Kali launched into a slightly convoluted explanation of Vulcan philosophy, including IDIC and the Reformation.  She explained Surak's role as the Confucius or Buddha of Vulcan, the _Kolinahr excising of all emotion and various related topics.  She finished by saying, "It all boils down to what we would call the Vulcan version of the Golden Rule, 'The spear in the other's heart is the spear in your own—you are he.'"_

            "That's not the Golden Rule," Yoshi argued.  "The Golden Rule is 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'.  The Vulcans are saying that what you do unto others is done to yourself."

            As Yoshi and Kali argued about whether or not Surak's famous maxim was like this "Golden Rule"—whatever that was, Ayuiij got up and began searching through Kali's things for a piece of paper and something to draw with.  Ayuiij was surprised when she found the packet of paper.  Most humans no longer used paper, they preferred to do things solely on computers.  Ayuiij grabbed a pen from Kali's hand almost without being noticed and sat back down on the bed to draw.

            "How's this for your satire?"  Ayuiij asked, smiling evilly.  Kali and Yoshi had subsided into silence, glaring at each other, not really in anger, but in indigence.  She held up a piece of paper.  Upon it was drawn a cartoonish, dead, Vulcan with a spear sticking out of its heart, and the caption: _The spear in the other's heart is the spear in your own—you are he—__The New Multiple Personality Disorder._

_            "That's horrible," Kali said while laughing.  "Here, write it in Vulcan."  Kali scribbled down the statement in Vulcan and Ayuiij carefully copied it onto the piece of paper.  Kali and Yoshi spent the next hour or so re-interpreting the whole of Vulcan philosophy into a combination of military totalitarianism and psychological disorders.  Ayuiij contributed every once in a while, but she found herself sitting back and listening to and being impressed by the pure nonsense humans could invent and then justify.  By the time an hour had passed, Kali and Yoshi had six or so pages of material._

            After swiftly reviewing its contents, Ayuiij shook her head.  "And you thought I was going to eat you?"  Ayuiij asked Kali.  "Your new roommate is going to roast you alive if she finds out that you did it."

            "She's not going to find out, because Yoshi's going to use her happy little transporter to beam it on her desk while I am in the room—it will clear me of suspicion."  Then Kali laughed far more evilly than Ayuiij had thought possible.

            Ayuiij and Yoshi left soon afterward and made their way back to their cabin.  On the way, Yoshi mentioned that she wanted Ayuiij to help her with a holomatrices she was designing for something called a 'video game'.

            "What's a video game?"  Ayuiij asked curiously.

            "Old earth progenitor of the holodeck," Yoshi explained.  "There's this old game called Tekken © that I want to make into a holodeck program.  I noticed you have a sword—can you use it?"

            Ayuiij took offense.  "Of course I can use it," she said, irritated.  "I have it, don't I?"

            Yoshi threw up her hands impatiently.  "Well, it could have been a family heirloom or something."

            "It is a family heirloom!"  Ayuiij snapped, then she let out a sigh.  "Sorry, I forgot that you don't know anything about Andor.  We learn to fight as soon as we breathe, practically.  Otherwise we'd all just kill each other."

            "Great," Yoshi said sarcastically.  "So you should like Tekken—it's a martial arts fighting game."

            "Yeah?"  Ayuiij said.  "I wouldn't mind helping you out at all."

            "Good," Yoshi responded.  "That settles that, then."  The two entered their room and stayed up far past the Academy's recommended bedtime speaking to one another. 

            The next day was orientation for all of the new, first year cadets.  Ayuiij thought that Starfleet was more efficient than her old school, but orientation was still, necessarily boring.  The only interesting thing that occurred all day happened when Ayuiij noticed that someone was even more bored than Ayuiij.  This particular person had come into one of the physics classrooms, sat down at a desk, put her head down, and promptly fell asleep.  Ayuiij had smirked at that, and then continued to smirk at the teacher's mounting irritation.  Finally, the teacher, an older Vulcan had let out a rather human-sounding sigh and raised his voice:

            "Cadet Sadik, perhaps you would care to wake up and pay attention."  Sadik sat up slowly and deliberately as she gazed directly at the Vulcan with sharp, impertinent blue eyes.  Her shoulder length black hair was perfectly straight and framed her face until the girl rudely shoved it back with both hands.

            "Isn't there any way to speed this up, Mr. Surak?"  Sadik asked with an annoyed air.  A dangerous smirk played around the edges of her lips.  "I'm bored."

            Ayuiij nearly fell out of her chair laughing, but she held her breath and waited to see if Cadet Sadik would be expelled then and there.

            "Yes, Miss Sadik, we could speed this up, as you put it, if you were to pay attention.  As it is, you have caused this to take longer, 12.65 seconds, to be precise.  You will see me one hour before class tomorrow, Cadet—and my name is Commander Senek—you will address me accordingly."

            "Aye, sir," Sadik replied neutrally.  Ayuiij didn't think Sadik had been chastened at all.  When the cadets were released from the class Ayuiij made her way over to where Sadik was seated.  The girl appeared to be from somewhere around Southeast Asia.  She was shorter than Ayuiij by three inches, and had an athletic, slender build.  Sadik rose from her chair in a prolonged sort of way, then looked at Ayuiij and raised an ink-black eyebrow.

            "Hello," Ayuiij said with a mischievous smile.  "I couldn't help but notice you were bored in that class."  Yoshi and Kali came over to stand slightly beside Ayuiij.  "Me, too."

            Sadik gave a smile that was slightly hesitant and fairly friendly.  She stuck out her hand for Ayuiij to shake.  "My name is Jori Sadik," she said in a voice lower than either Kali's or Yoshi's.

            "I'm Ayuiij ch'Ishima," Ayuiij replied, grasping Jori's hand tentatively; Andorians were much stronger than the average human.  She didn't want to break something accidentally.

            Jori startled her by breaking out into laughter.  "Wow, I'm bad with names anyway, but I'll never remember any one like yours," she said.  She looked over at Kali and Yoshi.  "Tell me yours are more normal."

            Confused, Ayuiij wasn't sure whether to take offense at what seemed like a serious breech in etiquette.  On Andor, one did not mock another because of a name, names were too important.  Ayuiij could already feel a thread of anger rising from within her.  She quickly tried to dismiss it—Jori seemed like the type to insult openly if she truly wanted to.

            "Yoshi Tamakari," Yoshi said, her voice far more skeptical than friendly.  She cast a glance at Ayuiij.  "Like 'Jori Sadik' is normal.  Ayuiij ch'Ishima is perfectly normal for an Andorian."

            Ayuiij knew very well that Yoshi knew nothing about Andorian names, or nothing about Andorian culture in general.  Ayuiij wasn't going to tell Jori that, though.

            "I'm Kali," Kali interjected, sensing that Yoshi was about to say something rude to Sadik.

            "'Jori Sadik' isn't normal at all," Jori replied, "that's why I like it."

            "Make sure you let your parents know," Yoshi suggested facetiously.

            Jori frowned slightly, her forehead creasing.  "I barely remember my parents," she said matter-of-factly, "they died when I was . . . younger."  She paused and gestured that the small group make their way into the hall.  "So, Ayuiij, Yoshi, and Kali—what are you people going to do now?"

            "Eat," Yoshi replied firmly.  "We're going down to the Replicafe."

            Jori shrugged.  "Food is good, works for me."

            "You'll love Yoshi, then," Kali told Jori as they began walking toward the Replicafe which was outside between the athletic fields and the Academy Observatory.  "She eats all the time."

            Jori gave Yoshi a sideways look, "Don't look it," she commented.

            The quartet went and ate lunch, passing the time making sarcastic comments about everything possible.  To Ayuiij's surprise, she felt that the group needed a little optimism to round out the cynicism.  Compared to the three humans, the Andorian was a cup full of sunshine.  When Ayuiij commented that the three were enough to make anyone psychologically unstable, she was met with a chorus of ragged cheers.

            A couple of days passed, and finally Ayuiij had been to all of her classes and met most of her instructors.  Most teachers had actually begun teaching.  The only class that was still dragging on was the self-defense class.  Apparently, the teachers had pre-paired sparring and practice partners according to strength and ability.  Because of the students delayed on Trill, the teacher, a very British Lt. Commander Keating, had decided to fit the students for sparring gear, and various equipment.  The only entertaining thing that had passed in that class had been Kali's muttered cries for help upon receiving her staff.  Ayuiij shook her head in mild disgust—it was the responsibility of the parent to teach the child to defend herself.  

Every Starfleet cadet had self-defense training every day until they attained a certain level of skill.  _I guess they got tired of their people being beat up by everybody in the galaxy, Ayuiij mused.  Ayuiij was not the only person to notice that Starfleet had been starting to edge toward a higher state of military efficiency again; Jori had commented on it as well.  Ayuiij had received enough good practice weapons to make her happy for a month.  She, like Kali, had a staff, but in addition, she had a short sword, a broad sword, double sticks, and a Klingon bat'leth._

            Ayuiij had gathered all of her things and dumped them in her corner of the practice room, then began to stretch out.  Soon Commander Keating would tell them to line up with their partners.  Of course, Ayuiij's partner was one of the late students, so Ayuiij had not even met her.  Ayuiij removed her practice shoes and socks and began a gentle calf stretch.

            At that moment, Ayuiij saw Commander Keating walking over to her with another person dressed in workout clothing.  As the pair drew closer, Ayuiij saw that Keating's companion was female.  _Darn, Ayuiij thought, she had found most other humanoid females to be less than vicious when fighting.  Ayuiij didn't want someone she would just run into the ground._

            "Cadet ch'Ishima," Commander Keating said in a crisp British accent, "This is Cadet Sayel, you're new sparring partner."  Keating caught her eyes and arched his eyebrows.  "Try not to eat this one, eh?"

            Ayuiij circled around the Vulcan female.  She was tall, only an inch or two shorter than Ayuiij, and had thick, wavy dark brown hair pulled back into a knot.  The knot revealed the trademark gracefully arched and pointed ears.  Her eyebrows arched upward in the characteristic manner, and she had unusual hazel-blue eyes.  Sayel watched Ayuiij with an expression of intrigue, but she only followed Ayuiij's circular movement with her eyes, not her body.

            Very slowly, Ayuiij reached out with a finger and tapped the tip of one of Sayel's ears.  "Pointy!"  Ayuiij exclaimed.  Ayuiij heard laughter from several of the other students, but the most prominent was another young woman—who happened to have even more startling physical characteristics than an Andorian.  Her skin was nearly indigo and seemed to sparkle, and she had long hair that appeared to be black, but was truly a very dark blue.  She gave Sayel a smile which seemed to mix amusement and affection.

            "Indeed," Sayel replied, and it almost seemed as if a flash of amusement passed beneath her eyes.  As Ayuiij watched, Commander Keating turned a shade of dull red.  _So, that's blushing, Ayuiij realized.  Amused, Ayuiij cast a glance at Sayel who regarded Keating with the same amount of fascination that Ayuiij had._

            "Cadet ch'Ishima," Keating said, his accent thickened and his voice became more clipped, a sure sign of his displeasure.  "Surely you know that it is against proper etiquette to touch Vulcans."

            "Why is that?"  Ayuiij asked Sayel.

            Sayel tilted her head to the side and folded her arms across her chest.  "I believe most Vulcans prefer not to be touched because they are what is known as 'touch-telepaths'.  Upon physical contact, they encounter a momentary telepathic contact.  Mostly, this contact comes without preparation and can be unpleasant—if perchance, the other mind was overly chaotic."

            "Oh," Ayuiij said, "do you care?"

            "Incidentally . . . not," Sayel said with the same calm tones in which she had spoken the previous sentence.  "I happen to be half-Betazoid as well, which seems to remove the restrictions of touch-telepathy."

            "You're saying you wouldn't need to touch me to read my mind," Ayuiij summarized.

            "Essentially," Sayel said.

            Appearing to be in pain, Commander Keating rubbed his forehead.  Then he dropped his hands and clapped them together.  "All right," he shouted, suddenly turning into a very formidable Starfleet officer.  "My job is to ensure that you aren't needlessly killed by some idiot who thinks he knows self-defense.  You are in these groups because some of you know a lot about self-defense, and some of you don't know a blasted thing.  The students who know something are going to lead the classes and I'm going to make sure the rest of you who don't know anything are learning what you are supposed to be learning.  Good.  We'll start with the basics for any good little Starfleet officer.  Rolling it is.  Cadet Jori Sadik!"

            "Yes, sir!"  Jori shouted, for once sounding completely serious and not sarcastic.

            "Cadet Sadik, you know a little something about gymnastics.  Teach us to roll!"

            Ayuiij already knew how to roll, and she preferred to practice the more advanced jump dive roll because it ensured that she would not break her antennae.  Seeing as she had already done that twice, Ayuiij saw no need to repeat it.  Jori taught the class front rolls, back rolls and how to fall to the front, back, and either side.  To finish that portion of the class, Jori demonstrated a kip that most other students laughed heartily at—not because Jori did not complete it well but because they couldn't dream of doing on at their stage of development.

            Singularly unimpressed, Ayuiij preformed a handless kip seconds before her neighbor, Sayel preformed the same move.  "Hey—you know how to do a kip."

            Sayel nodded.  "As do you."

            "You wouldn't by chance be able to fight as well . . . ?" Ayuiij asked expectantly.

            Sayel nodded again, sharply.  "I am reasonably proficient in the martial art form _Tal-Shaya as well as a Terran discipline called Tae-Kwon-Do.  In addition, I have advanced skill with the lipra, the staff, the bow, and the sling, and basic skills with the sword."_

            "What kind of sword?"

            "epee."

            Ayuiij gave a dismissive grunt.  "Broadsword is better.  Vulcans learn fast, right?"

            Sayel inclined her head, "Vulcans are predisposed to accelerated advancement in study."

            "Could have just said 'yes'," Ayuiij muttered in Andorian.

            "That would have been . . . less accurate," Sayel replied in Federation Standard without a pause.

            Ayuiij ignored the class around her and waited for Sayel to practice her flawless back roll for the third time.  "I think you've got it," she said dryly.  "So you speak Andorian?"

            "Fluently," Sayel responded as she bent over to touch her toes.

            Ayuiij had to pause their conversation as Yoshi took over for Jori, teaching the class some straight forward blocks and punches.  "So, you want to learn how to fight with a broadsword."

            "That seems advantageous for me, but why would you wish to teach me?"

            "I need someone to spar with, and most humans have to train for years to get the muscle tone required.  You don't, you're a Vulcan."

            "Indeed," Sayel replied again, this time with a note of dryness.  Ayuiij and Sayel did not speak again until Commander Keating moved on to instruct in the staff.  After doing a few more monotonous drills, Ayuiij let out a sigh.

            "I'm bored—want to do a little free sparring?"  Ayuiij asked Sayel, a plaintive note in the Andorian's voice.

            "As long as you agree not to kill me," Sayel replied in that same serene tone of voice.

            "Done," Ayuiij said.  "I won't eat you either, not even a little bit."

            "How generous," Sayel said, then she struck at Ayuiij with blinding speed.  In the next few seconds, Ayuiij's world of perception became almost entirely focused on Sayel.  The Vulcan was strong and fast, faster than Ayuiij, who was forced to retreat for many steps.  _Apparently, this Vulcan didn't give up aggression, Ayuiij grumbled to herself.  But after a few seconds, Ayuiij started doing better, although she was becoming winded.  Ayuiij knew she was in trouble then—Vulcans wouldn't get winded in a vacuum._

            Abruptly, Sayel's staff looped around Ayuiij's in a peculiar way, flipping Ayuiij's staff out of her hands and into the air.  Sayel spun around and caught the staff her left hand.  "Hey!" Ayuiij said in disbelief.  Firstly, she was startled that Sayel would execute such a move, and secondly, she was impressed.  "How did you do that?"

            "Forgive me," Sayel commented briskly, "I will show you in a moment."  She handed Ayuiij's staff back to her and swiftly walked over to where a Tellarite male and a Trill female were sparring.  Ayuiij could see that the Tellarite was being far too rough with the diminutive Trill.  "Cadet Trusk, Cadet Tereza," Sayel called out in an even, commanding voice.  "You will both stop, now."  When the two had stopped, Sayel turned toward Trusk.  "Anyone can see that you are being too rough, Cadet Trusk, you will stop."

            Trusk threw down his staff in frustration—the Trill jumped, but did not cringe.  Her bright blue-gray eyes flashed in anger, but that expression was quickly replaced by confusion.  "She's a coward!  I want a different sparring partner."

            "Cadet Tereza is not a coward," Sayel said without changing inflection.  "You may try being less harsh and more patient."  Sayel then promptly ignored Trusk and fixed her sedate eyes on Tereza.  "Are you injured?"

            "No, thank you, Sayel, that was very sweet of you."

            The Vulcan raised an eyebrow at that comment, but only replied: "You are welcome."  Sayel walked back over to Ayuiij who stared at the two, eyes burning in anger.  "Perhaps it would be best if you attempted meditation for a moment," Sayel suggested, her voice turning gentler.

            "Perhaps it would be best if I knocked his head off," Ayuiij replied.  "Little pipsqueak—I'd knock him across the room."

            "Please—" Sayel broke off as the Tellarite soundly and purposefully struck Tereza in the face with the staff, Tereza went down.

            "Block, you idiot Trill!" the Tellarite shouted.  Sayel swung her staff upwards and slid it between the Tellarite and his staff, then she jerked her staff backwards, yanking his out of his grip as well.

            With barely a grunt, Ayuiij grabbed the Tellarite, pushed and shoved simultaneously, and launched the Tellarite into the air.  He landed a good five feet away from his previous position, and sprawled, face-first.  Ayuiij's anger expelled, she rolled him over with her foot.  "Next time, play nice."

            Ayuiij walked back over to where Sayel crouched next to the Trill.  Her skin was a few shades paler than normal which made her brown spots and striking eyes stand out even more.  Her blue-gray eyes had filled with tears and now were spilling down her cheeks, but they were not the  fleeting tears of physical pain, but the lasting tears of frustration.  As Ayuiij looked at the Trill, she felt a sort of chill tingle down her spine.  At once, all her sense became alert and Ayuiij felt that Tereza was more than met the eye.  There was a certain . . . mist-like quality about her that defied description.  Then Ayuiij caught her gaze; it was there, something about the eyes that bespoke an unusual source of wisdom and stability for someone Tereza's age.  Some Vulcans possessed this sort of serenity—not Sayel, but some others had a powerful presence like the depths of the ocean.

            "You're a joined Trill, aren't you?" Ayuiij blurted out impetuously.

            Tereza nodded, then turned to Sayel.  "I don't know, all of the sudden there was just so much _confusion—I didn't know who I was anymore!"  When a new round of tears threatened to spill from Tereza's eyes, Sayel grasped her by the arm and gently pulled her to her feet.  "Elora," Sayel said in a tone that Ayuiij would classify as compassionate.  "This is to be expected—do not fault yourself.  As for Cadet Trusk, you may safely ignore anything he has to say—it is of no value."_

            Sayel briefly touched Ayuiij's arm.  "Will you tell the commander that we are visiting the infirmary?  I will make up this session with Cadet Tereza at another time."  Sayel guided Tereza out of the room, still holding her by the arm.

            "Sure," Ayuiij replied, mystified.  Due to her experience at the Vulcan Embassy, it was unfathomable to Ayuiij's imagination that a Vulcan actually be civil, let alone compassionate.  If this was Kali's new roommate, then Kali was fortunate to get a Vulcan who wasn't overly arrogant and superior.  _She might actually have a sense of humor, too, Ayuiij thought__, she almost seemed amused about the ear thing.  And even if she wasn't emotional, she still helped Cadet Tereza out—and managed to insult Trusk._

            "What are you so deep in thought about?"  Yoshi asked.  "Trying to figure out how you're going to explain throwing Trusk across the room?"

            "No, and it was only five feet."  Ayuiij shrugged and picked up Trusk's staff.  "I was thinking that there's hope for the Vulcans after all."

            "Well, hope does spring eternal," Yoshi muttered, then glared at Trusk.  "You want to spar with me?" she snapped at him.  "I'll kick your Tellarite butt up and down the dojo!"

            Typical for Tellarites, Trusk grunted.  Ayuiij threw him his staff a trifle harder than needed and gave him a warning look.  "So," Ayuiij said, looking at Yoshi.  "Lunch?" she asked absently.  Ayuiij found that her stereotypical view of Vulcans had been quickly dashed, and she harbored an inordinate curiosity about Elora Tereza.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: I received a bit of lovely constructive criticism from Shaan Lien. She suggested that the class were too unstructured and informal for a military environment. I shall attempt to incorporate the militaristic aspect of Starfleet into later stories. However, this story isn't going to be too focused on so much the classes or the military. This story is about people and what they do in off hours. If I think something is "fun", I'll probably mention it. But don't expect me to mention that Calc 2 was boring on Monday, then it was boring again on Tuesday, and so on and so forth. Also, if I don't really know what I'm talking about, I'll tend to skip. So don't expect too many details about classes a high school senior wouldn't know. I also wanted to thank everybody for their enthusiastic reviews. It's actually nice to have people nag you and say, "write your story already, I want to read it." Also, a special thanks to the persons that at least partially embody the characters of Ayuiij ch'Ishima, Kali Samsara, and Yoshi Tamakari: the story would not be half as fun without you as inspiration; you have great personalities. Also, for you gente who actually know these people in reality: No, they are not exactly the same, most of these people wouldn't actually give a hoot about Starfleet Academy, so there has to be adjustments or changes I just wanted to do—writer's prerogative.

Time: About two weeks previous to the events in Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Elora Derii stood nervously in the door of the Ten-Forward lounge of the _Starship Enterprise_. The room was large and spacious, with table dotting it in a conservative manner. Most of the people in the room were crowded at the bar, were one or two to a table, and the most were standing up and milling around in a semi-self-conscious manner. The Starfleet officers, she could see, occupied the bar, while the new cadets didn't seem to know what to do with themselves. After seeing all this, Elora wove her way through the moderately massive crowd and sat down at a table before she could attract any attention. Normally, Elora wouldn't have been so self-conscious, but she was aboard the _Enterprise_, most of the crewmen had a list medals and accolades longer than Elora was tall. In addition, the delegation of the Kamari people was aboard, and Elora didn't want to chance messing anything up.

__

Don't be ridiculous, Elora scolded herself after coming to her senses. _As if stepping on the toes of the ambassador would undermine your entire self-worth. I don't recall reading in the Word that one is morally culpable for clumsiness._ Elora took a deep breath and forced herself to relax again. As she looked around the Ten-Forward lounge she saw a few other prospective cadets from Andor, Trill, Betazed, Vulcan and other planets in their corner of the Alpha Quadrant. The _Enterprise _would travel to the Alpha Centaurian system next, and finally to Earth. Generally speaking, Elora knew that the flagship of the fleet would not be relegated to a ferrying service; however, the presence of the Kamari delegation changed all that. The Kamari system was located on the far side of the Romulan Star Empire, and the Kamari's visitation to Earth marked the conclusion of a series of treaties establishing peace between the two peoples. Because the Kamari had technology to "construct" hyperspace corridors, they could pass through Romulan space without truly passing through Romulan space. The Romulans did not have the technology, and the Kamari weren't in a terrific hurry to share with them. They preferred to deal with a primarily democratic organization, such as The United Federation of Planets.

As a token of the Kamari goodwill and participation in the Federation, two of members of the delegation had applied to Starfleet Academy and both had been accepted. The Kamari delegation had spent the last few months on a somewhat limited tour of the Alpha Quadrant. They had begun their stay on Vulcan, sojourned for a month, then traveled to Earth, the Centaurian system, out to Rigel, Sirius, and back again to Betazed, Trill, and finally, returning to Vulcan.

Elora gazed out to the opposite side of the Ten Forward Lounge where large windows of transparent aluminum stretched across the walls, revealing the endless eternity of stars. Elora let out a sigh at the sight of its poetic beauty. For a moment the stillness of space seemed to quiet the raucous noise, created by mostly humans, in Ten Forward. 

A few minutes later, a young woman, with short blond hair and wide blue eyes that stood out on pale, freckled cheeks, sat down across from Elora.

"Hi!" she said cheerfully. "I'm Lael."

Elora regarded her curiously for a moment; this one had the characteristic large eyes and secretive smile of a Betazoid. "I'm Elora Derii," she said after a brief pause, "but I bet you already knew that."

Lael shrugged, still smiling. "Not really, I wasn't _trying _to read your mind."

_I was right, _Elora thought triumphantly. She smiled back at her, "It wouldn't have offended me, I don't really have anything to hide."

Lael stared at her for a moment. "I know, that's why I came over here, actually. Do you know that you kind of exude that air? You've got a guilelessness about you that most telepaths would find soothing. And," she said, waving a hand in the air toward everyone else in the room, "you're far less chaotic than all of them. But then again, humans are the noisiest people in the quadrant. Did you meet many Terrans on Trill?"

"No, not really," Elora said thoughtfully. "There were a couple people who worked at Starfleet Security, but not a whole lot. Trill society is generally insular." Elora leaned back in her chair a little and crossed her arms. "I have never met a telepath before, and I've always wanted to meet one. What's it like? Can you read everyone's mind the same? Does it ever confuse you? Oh, sorry," Elora said quickly. "If you don't want to answer, I understand."

"No, that's okay, I don't mind," Lael responded. "Actually, most non-telepaths are pretty paranoid around Betazoids. Even a lot of Vulcans are too—maybe they don't like the fact that we _know_ they have emotions. Not many people are just curious. And to answer your question: no, I can't read everyone with the same amount of ease. It varies from person to person and sometimes from race to race. The more naturally open a person is, the easier they are to read." Lael paused a moment, looking upward, lost in thought. "Umm, some Vulcans can block me pretty well because of the whole mind-discipline thing. That's a learned skill, though. There are people on my homeworld that I couldn't read if I tried."

Just then, the doors to Ten Forward opened to reveal two persons, the first of which instantly drew the attention of all in the room, including the attention of Lael and Elora. She was obviously Kamari, tall and thin with dark, glittery blue skin, and long, blue-black hair. She wore a white two-piece outfit, a no-sleeved vest, and a knee-length skirt, that contrasted sharply with the color of her skin. She gave an enigmatic smile as she entered the room, and folded her arms across her chest. She cast a glance back to her companion who was just now removing the hood of her cloak from her head. The Kamari's companion was slightly taller, and far less striking. She had light golden brown skin, and thick, wavy dark brown, nearly black hair. She wore the typical dress of a Vulcan female, a blue-gray cloak over a shirt and long skirt of a darker blue. She gazed around the room curiously, and nodded in the general direction of Elora and Lael.

The two went and sat down at a table, which held a three dimensional chess game. The Vulcan began inspecting the crystal and silver pieces of the elaborate chessboard as a crowd gathered around her companion. Elora and Lael watched them curiously for a few moments; then Elora spoke to Lael. "Well, what do you think of them? I don't mean a judgement—I am just curious to learn what your first impression are of people." Elora folded her arms across her chest and rocked back in her seat.

Lael bit her lip uncertainly and looked over at the group surrounding the table. After a moment she nodded and almost immediately shrugged her shoulders. "Well, actually, I couldn't read the Kamari girl too well. I think she enjoys being mysterious, and that always throws me off. But the Vulcan feels . . . I don't know, odd."

"Odd?" Elora said, her eyebrows rising. She hadn't been expecting an answer like that.

Lael shook her head in frustration. "Explaining how people 'feel' to a non-telepath is like telling a man blind from birth about the colors of a sunset. I don't know—it's like she's only partially there. She could just have some odd telepathic shields I have never felt before. I am not going to ask her, though, Vulcans are very private people." Lael smiled at Elora. "You can if you really want to know."

Elora chuckled a little self-consciously. "No thanks," she replied.

Suddenly, the crowd dispersed about the two like children running away from a parent who has a medical tricorder in hand. The Kamari was laughing out loud as she attempted to move her bishop to the king's level without even looking at the chess board. The Vulcan was characteristically stoic, but she seemed to be regarding her companion with a degree of confusion.

"Let's go say hello," Lael said impulsively. Elora looked at her for a moment, generally Elora didn't put herself out like that, but the Kamari and the Vulcan did seem like an interesting pair. Vulcans were typically low-key and unobtrusive, and this Vulcan seemed no different, but she also seemed to be friends with a purposefully obtrusive, attention grabbing Kamari. That fact was . . . unexpected.

"Okay," Elora said in belated response. The two got up and walked over to their table near the starfield.

"Checkmate," the Vulcan said clearly, and with the slightest touch of dryness to her voice.

The Kamari's jaw dropped and she looked indignant and startled at the same time. "Not fair," she grumbled. Then her eyes found Lael and Elora and lit up in friendly welcome. "Hey, do either of you play chess and can beat Sayel? Cause, yeah, she beat me in twenty minutes." She smiled in a self-deprecating sort of way while gesturing at the elegantly sculptured chessboard.

"Ten minutes. Additionally, because you have played but infrequently and you were not paying attention," Sayel responded calmly, "there was no other logical unfolding of events."

"I don't know how to play 3-D chess," Elora admitted. "I've seen the game before, but I have never played myself."

"Indeed?" Sayel inquired with a modicum of enthusiasm. "Perhaps you would care to learn?"

"Sure," Elora said eagerly. Lael chorused with a "why not".

"Very well," Sayel responded. She then pointed to herself and the Kamari. "I am Sayel and this is Siyana a'Kamara, we are traveling to Earth to begin studies at Starfleet Academy as I know you are as well."

"My name's Elora Derii."

"Lael Daemas," the Betazoid offered quietly as she studied the chessboard. "This looks complicated," she announced after a moment. "I don't like complicated, at least not in a game."

"It is not complicated," Sayel corrected matter-of-factly.

"Right, to whom?" Siyana asked sarcastically. When Sayel turned to arch an eyebrow at her, Siyana folded her arms across her chest defensively. "It is not a complicated game to learn—but if you want to be good at it, it definitely gets complicated."

"An accurate statement," Sayel responded. She arched her eyebrows as Siyana. "You are being discouraging; perhaps they could learn how the game works before you tell them they could not possibly learn because it is too complicated, therefore insulting their intelligence."

Elora's eyes widened at that comment. _I guess Vulcans really don't understand other humans or anyone else,_ she thought worriedly. _I can't believe she just said that to her_. Then, to her surprise Lael broke out in laughter as Siyana marched around the table and thwacked Sayel on the arm. "That was so not funny!" she said indignantly. "I so did not say that. At all."

Sayel's eyes sparkled with the briefest hint of amusement and it was only then that Elora realized that Sayel had been teasing Siyana as any other person would a close friend. "Oh," Elora said, for a moment feeling sort of dumb, then laughing out loud.

"Lael seemed to think it was amusing," Sayel said in a neutral voice.

In a pseudo-pouting position, Siyana crossed her arms over her chest and did a convincing caricature of a little girl's whine, "So if _Lael_ thinks it's funny, it is, but what I think doesn't matter at all."

Sayel raised an eyebrow at that, as if silently communicating that to grace that comment with a reply would be to engage in far too much illogic for one evening. "Although your mockery of a small, naughty child's voice is clearly above satisfactory level, I would prefer that you _not _indulge yourself in that practice."

"Only if you're nice to me," Siyana demanded in less whiny, yet still petulant tones. Then she dropped the entire act and turned to Elora and Lael. "So about that three-dimensional chess," she said with an impish smile. "Here," she continued, taking one of the smallest, most slender pieces from the board, "this is a pawn, let me show you what it does." She and Sayel switched off explaining the purpose and capabilities of each of the delicately formed crystal and gold pieces.

They finished the learning session with a short, concise game played with Elora, whom Siyana coached, playing Sayel. Sayel expertly caught each of Elora's typical errors and oversights, and within minutes, Elora had lost the game.

Elora was busy feeling discouraged when Sayel's eyes flickered upon and set upon hers. "Satisfactory for a beginner, you did not make the more useless errors that most beginners do." Elora instantly noted that Sayel was neither careless nor inaccurate with her praise. She clearly believed everything she said, and probably would have thought it "superfluous" to state anything other than the complete truth, especially if saying anything other than the complete truth were to pacify a emotional being like a Trill.

"You know," Siyana suggested in a offhanded manner, "you could have let up on her; she is a beginner you know."

"I am aware of the fact that she is a beginner, but I do not see how, what is the expression?" Sayel asked, not quite interrupting herself. "Taking it easy on her?" I do not see how that would benefit her in the end. She would just have to reverse her steps and unlearn deleterious habits. It is better to learn correctly the first way."

"I don't think it helped her self-esteem," Lael commented quietly. Elora silently agreed, and for the first time wished Lael wasn't a telepath, certainly when Sayel raised an eyebrow with the first hint of true emotion she had showed for the evening. The emotion closely resembled disdain, although very mildly. Elora didn't want her thoughts told to everyone, especially a cold-hearted person like Sayel, and Vulcans in general. _Sorry, Lael, that probably wasn't fair,_ she thought, silently wishing Lael could hear her_, and most people could probably figure it out anyway._

Sayel's voice took a slightly more gentle turn as she placed her hands behind her back and looked from Lael to Elora. "It is not losing the chess game that damaged Elora's 'self-esteem'. It was the fact that she placed some degree of intrinsic value of self-worth upon _winning_ the game that did the damage."

Siyana was nodding. "Sayel's right. People generally aren't upset because they can't sing or draw well or play sports. They're upset because they think they should be able to do those things and they can't," Siyana said, moving her hands in an almost circular pattern to emphasize her point. "It's because we think it's important and it really isn't."

"I think I would cry if I couldn't draw," Elora said, thinking of her many sketches hanging in her parents' house on Trill, and still more stored in her things in her cabin, waiting to be hung up in her new room at Starfleet Academy. She wondered if any of the cadets at Starfleet would care enough to look at her things. Not many people outside her family had seemed to care back on Trill, and the ones that did almost seemed to be doing her a courtesy. Elora didn't even know if she was good anymore. She felt a frown cross her face as she stared off into space. She realized that all attention was on her. "Sorry," she said, "I was . . . ."

"Looking at _itna_," Siyana said firmly, she then shot a glare at Sayel, as if daring her to disagree. Sayel merely raised a placid eyebrow in response.

"I don't know what means," Elora said in polite bafflement, her voice taking on a sort of refined quality, revealing to anyone who knew her a combination of skepticism and confusion.

"_Itna_ is what you are staring at when you're not really looking at anything," Siyana explained, her eyes lighting up with mischief. "Or when someone points and says, "Ooh, look behind you," but there isn't really anything behind you. Whatever it is that you turn around and look at, that's _itna_."

"Okay . . ." Lael said, a frown crossing her face as she shot a confused look at Elora. "Is that a word in Kamari or something?"

Siyana began to laugh, eventually laughing so hard that she couldn't answer Lael's question.

"She made it up," Sayel said with a sigh. "She enjoys making up words. At this rate, in ten years she will have enough words for her own lexicon."

"Ooh, I _will_?" Siyana managed to gasp out enthusiastically.

"Yes," Sayel said, an edge of sarcasm entering her voice. "You can name it _Siyana's Lexicon of Nonsense Terms._"

"Yay!" Siyana said, then her eyes lit up again. "Will you translate it in to Vulcan for me?"

"No," Sayel responded adamantly.

"You're mean," Siyana said, raising her eyebrows at Sayel and taking on an air of superiority. "I'm going to ignore you now."

Sayel merely arched her eyebrows in response, and to Elora's surprise Lael burst out laughing. "Now that was funny," Lael said, grinning at Sayel.

Elora felt herself becoming more confused by the moment. _I don't know if I can stand four years of this . . . chaos_, she thought to herself. She had to guess that Lael was just reading Sayel's mind.

"Oh, not fair, I want to know," Siyana said, turning imploring violet eyes onto Lael. "Tell me, tell me."

"It was nothing," Lael said with a shrug. "Just something about 'sorrow upon sorrow'."

"More sarcasm," Siyana muttered, shooting a semi-dark look at Sayel. "Surprise."

"I could not draw to save my life," Sayel said, abruptly re-inserting herself into the previous conversation. At nearly everyone's confused stare, Sayel inclined her head toward Elora. "I am steering the conversation back to what it was before we degenerated into the conceptual world of 'itna'."

"Ah," Elora said, trying to remember what it was that they had been talking about.

"I could not draw to save my life," Sayel repeated, fixing Elora with her direct stare. "Would you judge me for that? Am I any less of a worthwhile person?"

"Well, no," Elora said, shifting back and forth, she could sense where this topic of conversation was headed.

"Then you should not judge yourself."

"It's not that simple," Elora replied.

"Yes, it is," Sayel instantly contradicted. "But people insist upon acting as if it were otherwise. You should not allow yourself that pretense, it will keep you from undue sorrow in the end."

"Sayel thinks people can just ditch their psychological problems by force of will," Siyana said to Elora, as if revealing some secret. "Most Vulcans are like that."  
"No . . ." Sayel said slowly, shaking her head, her expression becoming slightly less focused for a moment. "I believe that one may leave _most_ of one's psychological problems by rearranging the thought process and acquiring a disciplined mind. The majority of Vulcans believe that all behavioral psychology is alterable through will power. I do not."

"Hey, do you like psychology?" Lael asked in a timid voice. "I do, I think I am going to major in it. That or sociology."

After a longer pause than the question warranted, Sayel responded. "I am familiar with many psychological theories, mostly with aberrant behavior among telepathic species. Whether I like it is somewhat irrelevant, although I confess to finding the subject fascinating."

Lael smiled. "In other words, you like it," she said with an understanding smile.

Before Sayel could respond, Siyana interrupted her. "She'll deny it until she's blue in the face—hey, like me—so just know that yeah, she does like it."

"I did not confirm or deny whether I liked it," Sayel responded, her voice becoming more distant. "I like chess—at the moment I am not considering psychology in that regard."

"Why not?" Lael asked artlessly. "Why are you angry?"

At that, Sayel's head shot up, and Elora almost_, almost,_ caught the look of surprise that flickered across her features. "I had forgotten you were telepathic, fascinating," Sayel responded in a voice completely devoid of any suggestion of fascination. Intrigued herself, Elora watched as a mask slipped over Sayel's features, cutting off any semblance of emotion, interest, or expression in general. Impassively, Sayel said, "Vulcans value their privacy, perhaps you will have recalled that?"

Despite Sayel's voice lacking any sort of edge or mean-spiritedness in general, Elora winced, and she noticed that both Lael and Siyana had become very quiet. Lael was staring down at the table, and Elora instantly felt sorry for the girl. Betazoids were naturally inquisitive and open; it was probably very easy for Lael to forget that others were not so open. Elora felt very uncomfortable for the few long seconds in which silence had descended. Finally, Sayel spoke in an even voice. "You should also know that I am not angry now." She looked over at Siyana who seemed as relieved as everyone else. "I believe that you mentioned that the _Enterprise_ has a state-of-the-art stellar cartography laboratory. Perhaps it would be intriguing to examine the facilities?"

As the quartet walked down to stellar cartography, familiarized themselves with the equipment, and brought up the home system of the Kamari on the surround-stage, Elora found herself wondering about why Sayel chose to have mercy on Lael, by all accounts, an "emotional being". Many things that Elora had just observed about Sayel seemed to be contradictory, but many Vulcans were just like that. She didn't know, and she wasn't going to know, and she wasn't particularly interested in the astronomy of the Kamari home system.

"Ah, _Kamara_," Siyana said as she pointed to the only M-class planet rotating about the trinary star-system. She pointed to each planet. "Arewea, Sutáien, Castilalla, Hidthana, Mjukrillith, and Perajish. They are names of the Muses."

"Muses?" Sayel echoed, looking at Siyana with perplexity. "Do you refer to the characters in Greek and Roman mythology?"

"Uh . . . no," Siyana responded. "But it's the closest word in Federation Standard to the word in Kamari. I suppose you could call them the 'embodiment of virtues'. Everything in our solar system is named after one of the nine virtues."

Sayel frowned at Siyana. "What are the names?"

As Siyana and Sayel discussed the Kamari solar system, Elora wandered over to the far side of the room, gazing at the bright burning orbs that were the primary stars of the Kamari system. A thin stream of hydrogen looped from the smaller yellow star to the blue giant, giving the blue giant the appearance of gaseous rings. An even smaller white dwarf, tiny in comparison to either star, orbited the other two stars as if it were a planet.

A smooth, distinguished male voice broke into Elora's hearing from behind her. "Remarkable, isn't it?" the voice asked, wonder tingeing its nearly arch tones. "I have seen wonders like this for more years than I often like to count . . . but even here there seems some sort of mystery."

Elora turned around, instantly recognizing the hawk-like visage of the captain of the _Enterprise_. "Captain Picard," Elora responded respectfully. She had never met the man, but even Elora, as sheltered as she was upon her insular home planet, had heard of the exploits and adventures of the legendary _Enterprise_ crew. Even to Elora, Captain Picard seemed to be the ideal captain. Nearly as calm and inflappable as any Vulcan, he seemed to rise above any situation, yet retained compassion for all and, seemingly, humility.

"Cadet Derii," Picard responded amicably. "It _is_ remarkable," he repeated absently, though with emphasis. Without taking his eyes off the rotating trinary stars, he spoke, "This is the home system of our Kamari guests, if I am not mistaken."

Elora nodded silently and continued to gaze in silent appreciation as the scene before her. For a few moments, the two stood in mutual, silent appreciation, but Picard spoke again. "Unfortunately, I did not come down here to stargaze," Picard said finally, with the slightest wisp of a smile touching his lips. He then fixed his eyes firmly on Elora and raised an eyebrow. "Not an hour ago I was contacted by Trill's ambassador to the Federation." Registering Elora's surprise, Picard continued. "The ambassador was insistent that I give you a message, and, if possible, personally escort you back to Trill."

"Back to Trill?" Elora echoed with confusion. She shook her head adamantly. "Why? That doesn't make any sense."

Picard nodded in partial agreement. "The ambassador's message may clear some things up for you, but I am afraid that I do not understand the matter completely. Apparently, there is a joined Trill by the name of Celosia Tereza who is a member of a very small religious sect. This woman is dying, and, for reasons unknown to me, no other person is able to receive the symbiont as the next host except you. The Symbiosis Commission wants you to join with Tereza before Celosia dies, if possible." Picard reached up to stroke his chin, deep in thought. "After receiving this message, I read part of your file on record with Starfleet Academy. Now you, Cadet Derii, are not a member of the Symbiosis Commission. There are over six billion other beings on Trill at the moment, Cadet, what do you have that six billion other people do not?" At this, Picard again refocused his sharp hazel eyes on Elora.

Elora's mind raced to find an explanation for the captain. "I don't know," she uttered aloud, "honestly—" suddenly her voice caught in her throat as she realized what she had that no one else did. "I am stupid," Elora said to herself before she looked up at Captain Picard. "I have heard of Celosia Tereza—she is a translator, actually one of the few at her level that is a member of my religion."

"Your religion?"

"It's very small on Trill, maybe two hundred thousand people, I don't know," Elora said, shaking her head. "It's only been around for the last hundred or so years. Most other Trills believe in a sort of ethical philosophy stemming from deism," she said with a shrug. "Not many people take God seriously anymore. It's not very 24th century. Anyway," she continued, drawing herself back on topic. "I think I am the only Trill of my religion who passed most of the high level psychological and psychiatric exams for the joining. I dropped out of the program when I took my final oaths."

"Did your oaths conflict with the joining process in some way?" Picard asked curiously.

"No, that wasn't it at all," Elora said bluntly, and with a sigh. "The oaths are a public proclamation of faith, and they attest that a person is an adult in the church. Therefore we have more rights and responsibilities, but we also are held accountable for our actions by other members."

"How does one become a member?" Picard asked, a hint of skepticism creeping into his voice.

"It's not a cult, if that's what you're thinking, sir. All you have to do is believe in the same sort of things, like any other religion," Elora responded. "The only reason why I dropped out is because no symbiont will join, or really, will stay joined with someone who is a follower of the Word."

"That's fascinating," Picard replied, "does anyone know why that is?"

"Psychological incompatibility has always been the answer once the host has rejected the symbiont. My . . . forefathers so to speak . . . were shunned for the last hundred years or so because no symbiont would stay joined. However, Celosia Tereza converted _after_ she was joined."

Picard's eyes lit up in realization and, unconsciously he angled his head toward Elora a little more. "So the symbiont was converted as well," he surmised.

"That would be my guess, sir," Elora said, trying to fight down a sudden growing nervousness. _I _am_ the only person who could ever take Tereza as a symbiont,_ she thought. _I suppose they could take Tereza back to the Pools, but that generally doesn't work out well, especially for as old a symbiont as Tereza. They are so used to having hosts that it is terribly hard for them to adjust. It might go into shock . . . or die. And who knows when the next compatible person will come around._ Suddenly, a surge of panic nearly overwhelmed her. _I left all of that behind_, Elora told herself,_ and that was never my dream anyway. It was just a tradition, and the chances of me actually receiving the symbiont were always so small._

"Cadet Derii?" Picard was asking, "Are you alright?"

"Yes, sir," Elora said, feeling incredibly disoriented. "It's just . . . it's just a surprise, that's all."

"Perfectly understandable," Picard said with a gracious smile. "Perhaps you'd like to return to your quarters to think about your decision?"

With a sinking feeling, Elora shook her head, "No, I've already made up my mind, sir. I'll do it." _I have to, there's no one else_, she added silently. She feared saying the words aloud because she knew that Captain Picard wouldn't understand. A Trill simply did not refuse an "honor" like this. No one would understand her reluctance, and they would rightly chalk it up to fear, or maybe even cowardice. "I think I will go to my quarters, though, sir."

Picard nodded, gazing at her thoughtfully. "Dismissed, Cadet."

"Aye, sir," Elora responded unenthusiastically.

About four hours later, Elora was still sitting in her room, nervously braiding and unbraiding her hair, just waiting as the _Enterprise_ rendezvoused with another ship that would carry the rest of the cadets to earth while Elora returned with the Enterprise. _This isn't going to be fun_, Elora thought for the hundredth time, her mental tones entering the bitter range and settling there. In the midst of her dark musings, a two toned sound broke, jarring her to alertness.

Elora waited to see if the person would leave, then mentally scolded herself for being so petty. "Come in," Elora called, hearing the apathy in her voice.

To Elora's surprise, Sayel stood at the door, a candle cupped in her hands. It gave off a delightful, gentle smell, almost a combination of the desert, water, and perhaps a flower Elora was unfamiliar with. How someone managed to include that into a candle, Elora did not know. Sayel stepped through the door and set the candle down on the table in front of Elora. "I was told one could feel the mental 'vibes' from down the corridor."

"Really?" Elora asked, horrified that she might have been a burden upon someone else.

"It is possible, but I perceived nothing," Sayel said calmly.

"You're a Vulcan, you would know if anyone would, right?" Elora asked.

"In fact, I am only half-Vulcan. I am half Betazoid as well," Sayel revealed.

"Oh, well, then you'd really know, right?"

Sayel's eyebrows arched upwards. "That would seem to fit a logical pattern." Then Sayel hesitated before crouching in front of Elora. "You are disturbed because you are to be joined with a symbiont," she said bluntly.

Stunned, Elora just stared at her Vulcan counterpart, her blue eyes wide. "How did you know that?"

"Lael . . . discovered it," Sayel responded carefully. For a moment, a touch of Sayel's impassivity dropped away. "Would you like a companion to accompany you back to Trill?"

_Yes,_ Elora's mind shouted. Then, she wouldn't be by herself when returning to the Academy. The academic part of Starfleet Elora regarded with confidence, but there were other parts that unnerved her, including the mere _brashness_ and seemingly fearless attitude of most Starfleet officers. It was intimidating. Captain Picard was even intimidating, even though he held his confidence in a quiet, mannered way. _But I can't be dependent, can I? I should be able to do this by myself . . . ._ "Sayel . . . that was really sweet of you to offer, but I think I should do this by myself."

Sayel rocked back on her heels and then proceeded to sit cross-legged on the floor across the table from Elora. "In my observation of many peoples, human, Trill, and Vulcan alike, I have observed a trait that is lacking in many other cultures," suddenly Sayel's eyebrows arched upward, "notably the Borg, but in other, more . . . accommodating cultures. It is what I call excessive individuality. People seem to think it is necessary to do absolutely everything with no help from others. It is a view that is entirely without logic." Sayel hesitated for a moment, and then continued speaking in a very gentle tone. "There is no reason for you to do this by yourself. Will you at least have family waiting for you back on Trill?"

"No," Elora said with a start, she had forgotten that. "My parents are waiting for me on Earth." Within moments of that statement, the door to her quarters chimed for the second time. Elora looked at Sayel and raised both eyebrows.

Sayel shrugged. "My estimation? Friends of both our acquaintance." 

Sure enough, when the door opened, Siyana and Lael stood on the other side, Siyana having a look of stubborn determination, and Lael of eagerness tempered with timidity. Both looked at Sayel with differing degrees of surprise. "You told us it was none of our business," Siyana said, accusingly.

"It probably is not," Sayel agreed amicably, "but I felt I needed to speak with Elora."

"Felt?" Lael asked with a not unfriendly smirk, pouncing on her diction.

"Indeed," Sayel responded coolly.

"Hi, Lael," Siyana said cheerfully, elbowing her companion in the ribs. "Shut up, please."

"Yeah, that's me, shutting up," Lael said, fixing her pale blue eyes first on the wall, then on the candle sitting on Elora's table. "Nice candle."

"So, yeah, we want to come with you," Siyana said firmly. "You shouldn't have to go back all by yourself. I know how I would feel." Siyana then grimaced and shook her head. "Actually, I don't know how I'd feel at all. Really, I'm sort of creeped out just thinking—"

"Siyana, _kroykah_," Sayel said sharply. "There is no need to add to her anxiety."

"Right," Siyana said. "Well, I guess it is interesting, at least psychologically. I mean, are you the same person, or a mix of two people, or a whole new person? And I am sort of babbling, so I'll just be quiet now." Siyana then looked around the room much in the same way Lael had and folded her hands in front of her.

Elora felt torn between despair and amusement. Then she finally smiled and shook her head. "I guess I should just stop arguing now and get it over with."

Sayel nodded slowly as she gazed off past Elora. After a moment, she cocked her head to the side. "That would seem prudent."

"I just don't want to get you guys into trouble."

"We won't get into trouble, the Academy will understand," Lael said quietly. 

Siyana shot her a skeptical look, smiled, and said, "No they won't."

"We will miss orientation and some of the other social activities designed to make the cadets more familiar with each other, nothing crucial." Then Sayel shrugged. "Whether the Academy understands is immaterial. If they wish to expel us because of this action, obviously we were not meant to take part in such an institution."

"Fate, Sayel?" Siyana asked, her blue lips curving upward in a smile that was far too nice to be considered a smirk.

"Logic," Sayel corrected. Sayel lifted her unusual hazel-blue eyes to survey the room as she rose to her feet. "This should be . . . fascinating."

Elora lay in a bed in a Trill surgical bay, Lael standing next to her. As Elora nervously looked around the room, Lael tried to comfort her with stories about her family back on Betazed. The room was like that of any other hospital in the Federation, pristine, with white and other pale hues of blue, yellow, and green. Various instruments, with uses Elora had no knowledge of, composed the room, making Elora even more nervous. By this time, she had lost track of what Lael was saying. "I'm sorry," Elora said nervously, "What did you say?"

"No, it's okay," Lael said, shaking her head and giving Elora an encouraging smile. "I was trying to distract you, but I think you are determined to be worried. It will be over soon at any rate."

At that moment, Sayel and Siyana appeared on the other side of the door, accompanied by another Trill doctor who regarded them quite suspiciously. Tucking something under her arm, Sayel ignored the doctor and walked into the surgical bay. "They're about to sterilize, and we need to leave," she said directly. "But I wanted to tell you not to worry, everything will be fine," she said confidently.

Siyana gave Elora a sweet smile. "We'll be here when you wake up—you can't get rid of us that easily."

Elora smiled back as the three swiftly exited the room. And before she had time to worry any further, the doctor gave her a few brief words of encouragement, then injected her with a hypospray.

In moments, Elora felt as if she were on the precipice between waking and sleeping. She did not know if the drug merely simulated this sensation or if she were really about to fall asleep. She knew her eyes were still open, but she could only make out vague and distorted shapes, there also seemed to be a lapse between sight and recognition. Physically, she felt nothing, and mentally she had only an unclear sense of confusion. She saw a doctor lean over her, and then move somewhere off to her left. She turned her head slowly, and saw a blurry figure stretched out on a bed identical to the one she lay in. Slowly, Elora realized that the other must be Celosia, and she smiled at the figure, knowing that she would soon enter into eternal peace, joy, love, and life. Elora got the vague sense that Celosia was smiling back at her. Moments later, a soft beeping noise floated up to Elora's consciousness, and she realized that Celosia was dead. A brief touch of sorrow pricked her heart; then Elora drifted away into unconsciousness.

At an indeterminate time later, Elora awoke to an overwhelming sense of first confusion, and then, loss. Elora gasped aloud as tears sprung from her eyes from another's emotion. She sat up, feeling herself begin to hyperventilate with a combination of panic and elation fueled by extreme disconcertion. She could feel the symbiont's emotions, not completely separate from her, now bleeding and blending into her own, her emotions and the symbiont's would soon be one. There would be a time when she wouldn't know what Tereza was feeling and what Elora was feeling, she would be both of them at the same time, and yet neither.

"Oh my gosh," Elora said as she covered her face with her hands. A curious echoing sensation drifted through her mind, as she felt the symbiont's thoughts, grieving for the loss of Celosia. Tereza sung a lament to herself, and Elora found herself listening, then singing the words of the song to herself. For a moment both of their thoughts snapped together as one, parted into distinction, then came together again. Elora could feel the symbiont's attention shift from Celosia to Elora as she strove to connect with her new host. Tereza was old, having eleven previous lifetimes of experience to draw upon. Elora felt a rush of love concern, and acceptance, and then felt that vanish into her perceptions about herself. _I wonder if this is how telepaths feel when experiencing others' thoughts and emotions;_ _I will have to ask Sayel or Lael._ Tereza's thoughts took an upward, enthusiastic turn at the thought of the two telepaths. Elora knew that the symbiont had always found telepathic species interesting and Celosia had formed a close friendship with a Vulcan. _Turrin and Yalen had Vulcan friends as well,_ Elora thought; these were memories of previous hosts of Tereza's, and therefore thoughts not her own. _Vulcans are people like anyone else_, Elora realized, _I have been treating Sayel as if she were somehow not a person, but something extraordinary._ Elora then felt a glimmer of amusement stemming from Tereza, but swiftly flowing into her mind. _Most Vulcans enjoy being thought of in such high regard, although they would deny it to the grave._

"Elora?" one of the nurses asked sometime later, poking her head into the room. "Your friends want to know if you're up to seeing anyone yet?"

Elora hesitated for a moment, torn between her desire to be alone, and a jolt of enthusiasm from Tereza, who eagerly desired to meet her friends. Their friends, her friends . . . whatever. "This is getting confusing," Elora muttered aloud before responding to the nurse. The nurse nodded sympathetically; she too was a joined Trill. "Sure, tell them yes. Tereza—we—_I_ want to meet them," Elora said, now feeling even more mixed up.

The sensation only increased when her three friends walked into her room. Impulsively, Siyana walked quickly to her table and hugged her, quickly followed by Lael. Sayel nodded a solemn greeting, but regarded her carefully. With a modicum of surprise, Elora realized that she would now be far more observant than she ever had been before—at least with people. Elora could spot a grammar or spelling error at a distance of 100 meters, but Tereza could read people almost as if they were transparent glass. She noticed every nuisance of facial expression and body language. Although Elora could as well, Tereza could see pick out the relief on the features of Lael and Siyana, and the smallest hint of worry on Sayel's face with a combination of something else . . . curiosity.

"Live Long and Prosper, Sayel," Elora said with a mischief temporarily borrowed from Tereza. Only a second later did Elora realize she had spoken in perfect Vulcan. 

"Peace and Long Life," Sayel returned in the same tongue, " . . . Tereza."

"Elora doesn't even know Vulcan," she responded, realizing that while Tereza was speaking _more_, she didn't have a monopoly on the conversation. "I think enough of my previous hosts spoke Vulcan that it's permanently ingrained in my memory."

"Fascinating," Sayel said. "I have spoken to few joined Trills, but I have spoken to enough to know that they have a rather eclectic base of information after enough lifetimes."

Lael was staring at Elora, eyes wide. "This is so weird," she said, her voice faltering.

"This is so cool," Siyana said enthusiastically. "Elora, do you realize that you even speak differently now? I can tell the difference and I've only known you for a few days. This is so cool."

"You said that," Lael grumbled. When Sayel raised an eyebrow at her, she shrugged miserably. "I'm sorry, it is just so strange. I just spoke to Celosia Tereza and now I'm talking to Elora Tereza who used to be Elora Derii. And I can feel the difference, and what's more, I can feel your minds joining together. You are becoming less distinct the longer we stand here and talk." Lael shivered, "it's sort of creepy, you know?"

"No, I don't know," Siyana responded, annoyed. She cast a conspiratorially annoyed look at Sayel who merely responded with Vulcan stoicism.

Elora couldn't help feeling a little stung by Lael's description, but Tereza seemed to accept it as normal, or at least common and innocuous enough to remain inoffensive. "Sorry," she said diffidently. "Nothing much I can do about it."

"No," Lael said, waving a dismissive hand, "I'm sorry, just ignore me. I know I'm being silly."

Then Elora cast a look at Sayel. "You're speaking differently, too," she commented.

Sayel's eyebrows arched in surprise. "Very perceptive. I was told that if I did not drop the formality I would be taken out and shot," she said dryly, casting a look at Siyana.

Elora paused for a moment before speaking. "I was wondering if this . . . sensation was anything like telepathy, but I guess not if this is so odd to you." Elora felt Tereza's interest spark at the question.

"Does it feel like a blending, a . . . merging?" Sayel asked, crossing her arms across her chest and tapping her finger against her lip as she spoke.

"Yes, and now I can barely tell the difference between Elora and Tereza," Elora responded, wincing at her phrasing. "I think if you asked me something about either now, I would just respond with 'I', ten minutes ago I really wouldn't have."

"Well, that's efficient," Siyana commented. "I don't really know too much about that kind of telepathy, but it sounds closer to a Vulcan telepathic experience than a Betazoid one."

"That is most accurate," Sayel responded. "Mind-melds can be very confusing to the untrained. One can easily lose a sense of self because of the seamlessness of the unity."

"Hey, I never felt that," Siyana said, turning to Sayel in protest.

"You've mind-melded with someone before?" Lael asked, "I've always wanted to do that."

"Me too," Elora uttered before she knew that she felt this way. Of course, if someone had brought up this before the joining, she _wouldn't_ have wanted to, but now she did. "Well, Tereza's always wanted to . . . ."

"And you in the last ten minutes?" Sayel asked. The Vulcan looked a little perplexed at the notion of desiring to experience a mind-meld. "Why?"

"I don't know, it seemed like it would be interesting," Lael commented, non-committal.

"I suppose non-telepathic species have always been curious about telepathy since we have no basis of comparison. It's almost like a fairy-tale, magical," Elora reflected.

"That sounds right," Siyana said. "You notice that telepathic species have interesting myths or legends about people with no telepathic power, but Terrans and Trills have stories about magic or telepathy."

"A human once said that science is magic rooted in a naturalistic explanation," Sayel reflected. "I believe that people are fascinated by the impossible, and so they attempt to make it real through fiction and fantasy."  
"But why didn't I feel all of that?" Siyana asked, repeating her question to Sayel.

"You melded with someone advanced enough in the mental sciences to keep the separation as well as adapt for changes when melding with non-Vulcans or non-telepaths."

"Why did you meld with someone?" Elora asked. "Just out of curiosity—you don't have to tell me."

The dark blue girl shrugged, then shot Sayel a quick look with her cat-like violet eyes. "The person had to show me something that I couldn't have learned any other way. Her name was T'Sina and she was attending the Vulcan Science Academy. I don't know, she was some sort of prodigy and knew everything there was to know about telepathic ability."

"She didn't know everything," Sayel corrected calmly, arching a scolding eyebrow at Siyana. "But she was highly advanced in the telepathic studies."

"Oh, Sayel, didn't I say something to you?" Elora asked suddenly, staring at Sayel. Celosia had said something to the other girl before she had died, and had given her something as well. Elora closed her eyes and tried to remember, but despite her efforts, she could not. "What did I say?"

Sayel looked at her oddly while Siyana stared at Sayel in much the same curious fashion. "I am not sure," she said slowly. "Tereza said only two words I could discern. Something about an El-Aurian and treachery. Do you know what that means?"

"No," Elora said honestly. "I don't have a clue."

"The only thing I can come up with is the whole Tolian Soran thing with the _Enterprise D_ and the Nexus? Remember? Dr. Soran tried to divert the Nexus to the Veridian system and almost wiped out a populated planet? Soran was an el-Aurian and he was definitely a traitor to the Federation and living beings in general."

"Okay," Elora said slowly. "That's all true . . . but I don't understand the connection between that and anything else."

"Nor do I," Sayel said. The taller Vulcan hesitated, then began pacing through the small room. "Though I admit, this does coincide with the odd behavior Celosia demonstrated toward me." Sayel shook her head, her thick brown hair barely shifting in response to the swift, curt motion. "She seemed to know me from some other place and implored her daughter to give me a book and necklace of hers. But I do not see what either has to do with an el-Aurian, let alone a treacherous one."

"Well," Lael said with a shrug. "Maybe it's one of those mysteries that you never find out the answer to, but drive you crazy for the rest of your life."

"How useless," Sayel muttered.

"How cheerful," Elora said, not having heard Sayel. She stared at Lael with her lips pursed in dismay. "I hope that's not what happens."

"Or maybe it's one of those things that's actually important, but by the time it comes up again, you have already forgotten about it, and it bites you in the—"

"Thank you, Siyana," Sayel interrupted. "You, as well, deserve a sizable reward for optimism."

"Hey, I bet you I'm right," Siyana protested, grinning.

"What can I say?" Sayel retorted briskly. "You know everything, and hence are always right."

Laughing, Siyana just nodded in reply. "Oh, finally you picked up on that."

Sayel just made a neutral tone deep in her throat and turned to Lael and Elora. "Now that we are completed with such obvious silliness, we should begin to formulate a logical argumentation for why the Academy should not suspend us for arriving late to the first term."

"Ooh, I had forgotten about that," Elora said, despondently. Then she brightened. "Hey, I think one of Tereza's previous hosts was a defense lawyer."

"Then would you like to argue with Admiral Paris or another one of the Academy staff members?" Sayel offered generously.

"No thanks," Elora replied, shivering at the very thought. Six hundred years old or no, a Starfleet admiral was still an impressive thing.

"We'll leave that up to you," Siyana told Sayel. "After all, Vulcans can repress emotions like fear, and I don't know, panic."


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: A mighty big thanks to Hester for nagging me about writing this and to everyone else that read this. Generally speaking, I don't get too many reviews from people I don't know, and I actually did this time, so, gracias. (Oh, and for all those who surnamed me "the Obscure" and "the Philosophical", I get rather obscure and philosophical in this chapter, so, ha, and here's your warning. I like obscure philosophy and science, so too bad.)

Time: After the events in chapters 1 and 2

Chapter 3

As Sayel sat alone in the corner of the darkened rec room, a glimmer of a vision came unbidden to her mind. She had seen it before—many times; it seemed to enjoy lurking about her mind. In fact, if she concentrated, she could see the entire picture . . . .

. . . . A cliff of bare rock stood out in the west, jutting out to the center of the scene. Beyond it to the north was a towering waterfall, cascading over the side of a similar rock face of dull grey rock. Further back, beyond the falls, the moon shone over the waters, lighting the water, changing it from a dismal gray, indistinguishable from its surrounding, to a lovely mix of blue and gray, with a hint of white marking the shallow rapids. At the waterfall itself the swift river was fifteen meters wide, and the starlight made the falling water glint like falling jewels—diamond or topaz. If she concentrated, Sayel could almost hear the quiet murmur of the waterfall. 

At the base of the waterfall was a wide, deep pool, completely darkened. The moonlight did not reach the pool, and the shadow of the falls yawned over the river for many meters to the south. Below the falls, the river was far narrower, perhaps only six meters in width. Tall, verdant grass extended to the very edge of the river, and there wasn't more than a hint of sand before the land ended and the water began. Beyond the grassy banks, a forest sprung up. In the soft glow of moonlight, the sylvan area was mysterious and yet inviting . . . but in the golden light of the sun, the area would be enchanting. The forest was friendly—all the trees were well spaced and had large, leafy branches. Although Sayel could not see them in the moonlight, she knew there were oaks, maples, and willows--with vines winding about their trunks—as well as bushes of berries and fruit. In the day, enough sunlight would pierce through the trees to allow the grass to grow thick and green. Even in the night, the light of the moon and the stars gently touched the grasses waving in the light breeze. 

After the deep pool—cool and refreshing by night or day—the river was slow and relaxed. The moon was again glinting off the surface of the water as it flowed ever southward. If Sayel could have turned and gazed to the south, she would have seen, in the far distance, the mouth of the river open and pour into a bay lit by both starlight and moonlight.

"Sayel?" Siyana asked, jarring her out of her thoughts. The scene did not vanish, but only receded from her mind. Sayel blinked and focused on her friend who stood in front of her. The light from the hallway framed Siyana, making it difficult for Sayel to discern her features. A moment later, the doors slid shut, and the light vanished. "Its oh one hundred hours, what are you doing in here? I though I was the only insomniac."

"Then why is Akira with you?" Sayel asked, nodding at Siyana's companion. Akira Te'yas was Siyana's roommate. 

Smiling mischievously, Siyana laughed and said: "Akira doesn't sleep."

Knowing the statement was exaggerated purposefully, Sayel simply inclined her head and said, "Ah." Sayel then swiftly moved her feet from where they had been crossed upon the chair and gestured for her two companions to sit down. "Although you may be insomniac, I simply do not require the same amount of sleep as most humanoids." 

Siyana and Akira sat down. The latter was a tall, dark skinned Trill with a quiet, reserved disposition. Of course, it was possible that Akira was only quiet with people she didn't know well—most people at the Academy probably thought Siyana did not talk at all, mainly because Siyana wasn't fond of talking in class or to people she didn't know very well. 

"But you didn't answer my question, Sayel," Siyana said, the mischevity returning to her features. "What are you doing?"

Glancing at the blank pad of paper in front of her, Sayel raised an eyebrow. "Although it does not seem apparent at the moment, I was attempting to write down a description of something."

"Okay," Siyana said. Then she shrugged. "What?"

"A valley . . ." Sayel said slowly. "Although I have only seen it by light of moon and stars, I know the lay of the land perfectly." She then launched into a description of the cascading falls, the gentle, flowing river, and the winding road it took to pour into the moonlit bay.

"Cool," Akira said, smiling at Sayel and Siyana. "That sounds cool."

"I want to go there," Siyana said enthusiastically. "Seriously, let's go there—it sounded beautiful. Where is it? Somewhere on Betazed? We could spend one of our breaks there or something."

"No, it cannot be on Betazed," Sayel said, furrowing her brow almost imperceptibly. "The moon wasn't right, it was too small. If I had to hypothesize, I would say it was on earth. The flora was similar althout I have never seen Luna that bright." She paused a moment. "Though I cannot say with any certainty where it is."

"Wait a minute," Akira said, sounding confused. "You don't know where this place is? Weren't you there?"

Sayel arched her eyebrows. "That is a very good question. I will say that I was 'there' more truly than I have been other places that I have visited physically . . . but no, I have never actually seen the valley with my eyes."

"You mean it doesn't exist?" Siyana asked, sounding remarkably disappointed. 

Something about that sentence did not set right with Sayel. Of course, any other Vulcan listening to this conversation might have thought Sayel at worst mad, and at the very least terribly sentimental . . . but Sayel wasn't particularly sentimental. Overly imaginitive, perhaps, with an appreciation for things that did not exist, but she was not sentimental. And yet some things that did not exist, including this mysterious valley, somehow seemed more real than things that did exist, or more important.

"It exists in my mind," Sayel said. _Or perhaps my soul, I do not know_. Sayel happened upon a thought and almost smiled. "So, perhaps it does exist."

Now, Sayel was giving her a look as if _she_ thought the half-Vulcan, half-Betazed were mad. Akira was staring at her with polite confusion, apparently reserving the judgment of insanity until she knew Sayel a little better.

"There is a Terran philosophy that proclaims that no one can concieve of anything greater than reality," Sayel explained. "Because we are mortal, we are by nature finite creatures, so all that we think of is limited. Finate creatures cannot truly be _creative_, they must only be derivitive. Think of it this way, technology, tools, anything that humans can affect and influence are things that already exist. Since creation, 'there is nothing new under the sun'," Sayel said dryly, seeing Akira nod in appreciation. "In the same way that we cannot create physically, we cannot create imaginatively or intellectually. All that we devise can only be equal to or lesser than reality. One of the derivitives of this philosophy is theism. Because moral, finite minds can concieve of an infinite being, He must exist."

"Or She," Siyana commented.

"I think not," Sayel replied. "Others have, but I do not." 

"Actually, I don't either," Siyana said with a smile. "But what does this have to do with a valley?" She paused and before Sayel could explain, she nodded. "So you're saying that even if your valley doesn't exist, something better has to, or you couldn't come up with it?"

"Precisely."

"What philosophy is that?" Akira asked, her dark eyes shining in enthusiasm. "I could use that in so many things . . . ."

"I could not tell you," Sayel said, shaking her head. "Alas, I do not remember."

"_Alas_?" Siyana said, laughing aloud. "You just said 'alas'."

Sayel arched an eyebrow at her friend. She had used the work before, albeit infrequently. It had been a frequent part of Dominic's vocabulary, and because she had been thinking of him frequently, it had slipped into her own. She didn't think the Masters on Vulcan would approve. _Dominic would have said that "the Masters can go to seed" or something equally ridiculous_, Sayel thought with a hint of embittered amusement, _yet often he was quite right in sentiment._

"That's Dominic's word," Siyana realized after a moment. "Like 'aye', "blast", "bullocks", "woe", "blimeney" and—well, I know there are others, but I don't know what they are."

"Dominic is from the southern part of Scotland," Sayel explained . "And therefore has unique diction."

"He's also half-Vulcan, so it's funny," Siyana said with amusement. "Yeah, have you ever seen a blonde Vulcan before?"

Akira laughed, "No, I haven't."

"He's got kind of curly, strawberry blonde hair and green eyes, so the whole pointed ears thing makes him look more like an elf than a Vulcan. And he's brilliant—even for a Vulcan, he's smart."

Sayel shook her head. "I am not absolutely certain what elves look like, but Dominic fits no elven description I have ever read. And I do not think extraordinary intelligence is included in any elven description. If I recall Kamari mythology, he certainly does not fit any of those depictions."

Siyana pondered that, then shook her head. "No, you're right, he doesn't. But he doesn't look Vulcan." After a moment, she added: "Neither do you."

If Sayel had been completely Betazed or human, she might have rolled her eyes. "_That_, my friend, is most illogical. Dominic is half-human, I am half-Betazed—we both look less 'Vulcan' than one would expect."

"I have heard of 'elves' before," Akira said, shaking her head a little. "But we don't exactly have them on Trill. What is the difference?"

"Between Earth mythology and Kamari mythology?" Siyana asked.

"Right."

"The modern 'degeneration' I would say, of Terran mythology describes elves as small, mischievous magical beings, although I claim no expertise in the field. They are purportedly insular, good or evil according to individual mythologies, beautiful and delicate," Sayel explained.

"I like mine better," Siyana said a little mischievously. "In Kamari mythology, the elves are immortal."

"Generally they are in Terran mythology as well," Sayel interjected.

"When you say 'immortal' you mean that they don't die of sickness or old age. In Kamari mythology, they do not die, period. On Kamari we call them the twice immortal—neither their bodies nor their souls die. There are three races of elves—the Sun-Elves, the Moon-Elves, and the Star-Elves. Each is ruled by a _Liyë_—a King, and the _ Unelyaliyë_, the Star-King is the greatest of them all." Siyana smiled. "And they glow—because even the light loves them. How is that?"

"Wow," Akira said, her eyebrows going up. She was smiling, but to Sayel it seemed that her expression wasn't precisely that of happiness-it was one of surprised wonder.

"Indeed," Sayel said, gazing at Siyana. Something about that mythology appealed to Sayel on a deeper level than she had expected. "_Llo ossëdí . . . neñya . . . llo elossëdí lundim._" When both Siyana and Akira stared at her in questioning surprise, she shrugged mentally. "It was better communicated in Old Kamari," she explained. "In what other language can you simply say three words '_llo elossëdí lundim_' and communicate so much?"

"What does it mean?" Akira asked. 

Sayel glanced at Siyana to see if she wanted to explain. Siyana shook her head minutely. "Poorly and unworthy translated, it means 'I want to glow'. In truth . . . it communicates something to the effect of 'I desire, with an eternal desire, to glow with a light not my own'."

Akira nodded in avid agreement. "Wow . . . I like the second explanation better."

"Old Kamari is so much better than our language now," Siyana said with a disinterested shrug. "But I think Sayel knows as much about it now as I do." 

"Connotations are fun," Akira said, gazing off into space. "They just make language more interesting."

_They make it more real,_ Sayel thought silently. _Connotations make words closer to the reality of a thing._ Then a question struck her mind that she did not air to Akira or Siyana. This sort of question was a sort of question that Dominic would have asked . . . and Sayel would have chided her friend for being entirely unscientific. _Except, I don't really know if he is my friend now . . . because I was, as my human friends would bluntly put it, quite stupid. _Concentrating enough to keep the frown purely mental, Sayel lapsed into a train of thought that was quite pessimistic. _I should apologize . . . ._ Sayel's Vulcan training told her that such an apology was overly sentimental and that she hadn't truly done anything to merit an apology. _But my training's wrong,_ Sayel thought. _I have known this for the past year . . . which is why I am here, at Starfleet Academy, and not the Vulcan Science Academy_. A rare bit of cynicism leeched into Sayel's thoughts._ That, and they threw me out_.

Sayel chided herself for exaggerating, even in the privacy of her own mind. The Science Academy hadn't thrown her out—they hadn't even rescinded her Healer's license as the Masters of the Kolinahr had petitioned them to do. Two years ago, Sayel had been a member of the medical staff at the Vulcan Science Academy, along with Dominic Hawkins. Sayel, like her fellow half-Vulcan Dominic, had been born with rare telepathic talent. Sayel's was due to her unique mixture of Betazoid and Vulcan blood . . . and no one really knew why Dominic had such a facility for physical healing. However, Sayel's talent had existed primarily in two fields, one, the traditional skills of both Vulcans and Betazoids, and two, the ability to affect things on a more physical level.

These sorts of gift appeared on Vulcan one or twice in a generation, the same on Betazed and other planets with telepathic species, so Sayel and Dominic were oddities, but not overly alien. Sayel had been responsible for training children with unusual telepathic gifts while Dominic was a healer of the more traditional variety. In what in this facility that Sayel had met Siyana.

Like all Kamari, Siyana had some telepathic skill. Most Kamari could communicate without words, and others had more exotic gifts, but those, too, were rare. Siyana had some of the more exotic powers native to her species, and some of the rarest in the galaxy. She had an affinity for telekinesis as well as something even more potentially dangerous, pyrokinesis. Sayel had been appalled to learn (although she would not admit it at the time) that Siyana had not been trained at all. Sayel and Dominic had taken it upon themselves to train the Kamari while she spent a semester at the Vulcan Science Academy. Oddly enough, the three of them had been friends, and Siyana had considered taking classes at the VSA instead of Starfleet Academy, which would have fulfilled the treaty agreement between the Federation and Kamara as well. Then, of course, there was the incident with the Underlier that rather messed things up.

Underliers had always played a part in Vulcan mythology. They were creatures, if such a word could be used to describe them, of the desert, lying beneath, some said, or within, others said, the sands of Vulcan. Most often the Underliers appeared near Mount Seleya, to those making the ancient pilgrimages by walking across the desert sand. For this reason, and the fact that only a handful of sightings had occurred in the twenty thousand years following the Vulcan Reformation, they were thought to be mythology, or more accurately, thought to be a product of someone's vivid imagination.

Sayel supposed that Underliers must have been the product of the imagination of the Creator of the cosmos, for they were very real. One had appeared to both her and Siyana, and Sayel could still vividly recall the sense of overwhelming power and knowledge. It had occurred to Sayel that the Underlier was not especially _nice_—he gave Sayel an overwhelming feeling of justice . . . and even terrible mercy, but Sayel was convinced that the Underlier was not nice. What his words were, Sayel could never say, but she had caught their sentiment. The Underlier had something he wanted Sayel to do, and in order for Sayel to do it, she would have to gift up her telepathic gifts. Sayel had almost asked him why she should do as he asked, but she restrained herself at the last moment. Such a creature, in truth, a person, Sayel knew deep within her, was utterly flawless as regards to purpose and character—she would have to be a tyrant to refuse. The Underlier had then told Siyana she would have some part in whatever task he appointed, but she did not need to learn the same things that Sayel needed to learn. Sayel could however, give words to the Underlier's last thoughts: "Meet, then, whatever adventure comes to you." 

The Underlier had left with the whispering of a breeze, leaving Sayel and Siyana alone, and very oddly, wishing that he hadn't gone. _Those first days were odd,_ Sayel reflected. But it had not been the lack of telepathic skill that ultimately drove her from Vulcan—it had been Vulcan itself.

Oftentimes, Sayel had visited the Vulcan temples or meditated with the adepts and initiates of the Kolinahr, but now they refused her entrance. A Vulcan did not lie, and a mere touch of mind to mind revealed the truth of what had occurred. Dominic, a Healer in his own right, had validated much of what Sayel and Siyana had said . . . but the High Priestess T'Van had put her own interpretation on it. According to ancient law and custom, those spurned by either the gods or fate could not enter into the temples devoted to them. T'Van was a Separatist, very different from her predecessor T'Lar, and did not approve even of Vulcan's place in the Federation. Although Sayel would not ascribe such a base emotion as jealousy to an adept of the Kolinahr, it was the only motivation that made sense. Only a little before the Underlier had appeared, T'Lar had died, and Sayel had brought her _katra_ to Mount Seleya. Sayel, who was not an adept of the Kolinahr, and not even full Vulcan. T'Lar had been unorthodox and carried that unorthodoxy to the grave . . . so perhaps T'Van truly believed it well to exile Sayel from the entirety of Vulcan traditional customs, ceremonies, and work. Under this edict, she could not attend weddings, funerals, trials, or even visit Mount Seleya. Her work at the Science Academy had not ceased, but before the bigotry and exclusionist nature of the Separatists had been kept at bay, now even some of Sayel's 'friends' had turned against her . . . or more accurately acted with complete ambivalence. When the semester ended, the Healer above Sayel had suggested that she contribute her skills to a place less full of those with such "adamant philosophical oppositions". Her parents, true citizens of Vulcan had advised that she not regard any of it as a personal offense, after all, to take offense was to acknowledge an emotion. Perhaps it had been her early years on Betazeds, or her summers on earth with Dominic and his loving family that held loyalty and honor in such high esteem, but Sayel did not want to spend the rest of her life on a planet that was, in Sayel's opinion, philosophically skewed. At Siyana's suggestion, she had applied to Starfleet Academy and been eagerly accepted. Leaving the fields of psychology and psychiatry as far behind as she could, Sayel decided to study astrophysics, with philosophy and religion as a minor.

Again, Siyana interrupted her thoughts. "Okay, _now_ I'm tired. I'll see you guys for breakfast in the morning."

Sayel rose with her and wished both her and Akira goodnight, then left for her own quarters.

Finding a quiet part of the Academy grounds was a difficult if not impossible task on most days. Luckily, it was early in the morning on a Sunday, and the day itself seemed to ignore its namesake, and was content with enough fog to restrict sight more than a few feet in either directly. Just from being outside for more than five minutes was enough to make Sayel damp all over. Nevertheless, it was far quieter outside than inside, so Sayel walked far enough into the grassy common field so that the buildings around her disappeared, masked by the fog. As Sayel placed a mat on the dewy grass and sat down, she reflected that she looked as if she were in some magical place or a fantasy world. The world around her seemed to fade away more than six or seven feet out, and a curtain of damp gray hung over everything present, giving it an ethereal look. Sayel decided that she liked San Francisco, despite the fact that it was cold.

Sayel settled back into a cross-legged meditation position demanded by both the mental and physical disciplines. In this week, in this day even, Sayel had acquired many things to ponder deeply. But now, now, Sayel required clarity of mind. Another person, one less disciplined, would have forsaken the discipline for the thoughts that urgently besought her. Sayel knew, however, that the urgent could not overwhelm the important, and now she lay the urgent aside until she came to peace and clarity of mind. It took her the better part of a half hour to come to a conclusion that had been plaguing her mind for several days: what to do about Dominic Hawkins. _I must visit him and his father soon, and make reparation,_ she finally decided.

Her meditation complete, Sayel opened her eyes and looked about. The Academy grounds were now bathed in a lighter wash of cool gray fog, and Sayel could see a hint of Earth's small yellow sun beginning to come out. Sayel would have to get used to the cold for one, and the dark as well. Earth, by Vulcan's account was a rather dim planet, in night or day. Vulcan's primary star was much brighter than Sol, and at night, Vulcan was lit not only by a moon, but by her sister planet as well. Sayel knew that the Earth and Moon were technically a part of a double planet system, like Vulcan and the Watcher, but the Watcher was actually larger than Vulcan, and therefore shed a great deal of light upon the side of Vulcan that faced her. (It also struck Sayel that the astronomers of Vulcan's past were quite a bit more fanciful than the ones around now. Because Vulcan's moon sometimes crossed between her and her sister planet, the Vulcans had called the moon the Eye of the Watcher. Sayel was partial to that in a very illogical sort of way.) But, Earth's night was a great deal darker than Vulcan's often was, and the days quite cooler.

Kali Samsara, Sayel's roommate, had invited Sayel to have breakfast with her and a few friends. Sayel had readily agreed, and had asked Siyana if she wanted to come along. Siyana had agreed, and said she would bring her roommate as well. Sayel was looking forward to meeting some of Kali's friends. The girl, although shy, was friendly, and she and Sayel appeared to have at least a modicum of things in common. Surprisingly enough, the day before last Sayel and Kali had spent the better part of an hour talking about the books they had read as children, and quite a few titles and series came up in common. Sayel's mother was a Betazoid, and was fond of most types of literature. She had insisted Sayel read as a child, and not just the classic books most Vulcan parents foisted on their children, but science fiction and fantasy and adventure novels—things that Vulcans in general frowned upon. While Sayel's classmates had been reading _Macbeth _or other such Shakespearean nonsense at the age of nine or ten, Sayel had read _The Faerie Queene_ and _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. _Therefore, Kali and Sayel had ended up many of the same books. Sayel then learned that Kali had written a spoof of _Hamlet_ based on some archaic video game. Kali had reluctantly agreed to let her read it, but she had been skeptical about Sayel's receptivity on the matter . . . so, actually, was Sayel, but Kali intrigued her and she wanted to read anything Kali had written. Upon deeper than cursory examination, Sayel found Kali to be quite quirky, and Sayel had always considered facets of personality interesting. One such facet was Kali's apparent fondness for penguins.

Sayel walked briskly back to her quarters, took a shower, and changed—all before Kali had awoken. By Vulcan standards, Sayel was not a morning person, and she definitely slept more than the average Vulcan did, but according to her non-Vulcan companions she was practically insomniac. Sayel sat down at her computer to review her schedule for the day—she had a nice burst of classes in the morning, Molecular Chemistry, Basic Quantum Mechanics, Literature of the Federation, and Calculus 2. These were followed by a two and a half-hour break in the early afternoon and a physical training seminar that lasted a good two hours. Apparently, the Academy was introducing a new physical training regiment and the groups, although not chosen indiscriminately, were chosen in a way that no Academy student could fathom, and it seemed that Sayel, Siyana and her roommate, Lael, Elora, and Kali were all in the same training group. Three other cadets were in the group, but Sayel hadn't met any of them for more than a moment . . . except for the Andorian. After this, she had a class which familiarized every cadet with federation technology. After the first quarter ended, it switched to a class on engineering systems, and then a class on diagnostics for the second semester. Every student, unless the cadet was a part of the Medical Academy, had to take this class, and even then, it was strongly encouraged. Sayel had one class in the evening, Navigations, that again, every cadet had to take. For the first few weeks, the students learned about navigational theory and a bit about astrophysics and coordinate geometry in three and four dimensions. Next the students would practice in the holodeck, and when the students weren't prone to crashing themselves into mountains or cornfields, the students would actually fly outside of simulations. Every Starfleet officer was rated according to piloting ability, even medical officers.

At some point, Kali had oozed out of bed, told Sayel good morning with very little sincerity and went off to the shower. Sayel hoped the girl would be more alive when she exited the bathroom. Sometime later, Sayel got up to retrieve a book from her shelf. Her literature teacher had assigned them two books to read in the next few weeks, _The Death of Andor_ and Plato's _Republic_. While Sayel possessed both books, she had yet to read them. In fact, Sayel doubted that she ever would have if the teacher had not assigned it. Due to her mother's influence, she preferred fiction, fantasy, science fiction, or historical fiction. But the Academy seemed to insist that the cadets read something about the real world. With a silent sigh, Sayel lifted _The Death of Andor _from her shelf. When she returned to her computer a packet of paper lay on the desk. It hadn't been there before.

Sayel frowned fractionally (although an observer might have missed it)—Kali hadn't put it there, she had yet to get out of the shower. And, generally speaking, things, besides elementary particles, didn't spontaneously pop into existence. This, of course, left two possibilities. Obviously, someone or something had put the packet on her desk. Even more obviously, no one had come into the room to do it. This left "something", and specifically, the use of a transporter to beam the paper on her desk.

All of this flowed through Sayel's mind in less time than it took for her to reach down and pick up the paper and examine its contents. The first thing she noticed was the picture. It was a rather macabre drawing of a dead Vulcan with an archaic weapon, a spear, thrust through his side in the approximate location of his heart. The next thing she noticed was the writing. Written in the Vulcan script, it read, "The spear in the other's heart is the spear in your own, you are he—The New Multiple Personality Disorder." Sayel quickly skimmed the rest of the packet. It outlined the major portions of Vulcan history and society in such a way that made all of Vulcan seem violently psychotic and totalitarian. What's more, it was almost amusing.

By the time Kali had exited the bathroom, Sayel had her list of suspects narrowed down. There were only a few cadets at the Academy who were this cynical or politically incorrect. Of these cadets, few were brave or insane enough to actually send it to her. In addition, Sayel knew of only one other person who actually had a working mini-transporter in her possession—one Yoshi Tamakari. Sayel hadn't even met the other girl, but they were in the same self-defense class, and a few others as well. Also, Cadet Tamakari shared a room with the Andorian—the Andorian would have been crazy enough to send the drawing, but she didn't think either of the two wrote Vulcan. Sayel knew that Kali associated with the two cadets, and it was within the realm of possibility that Kali had come up with the Vulcan philosophy bit. So, when Kali emerged from the bathroom, Sayel watched her.

When Kali realized that Sayel had her complete attention fixated on her, she instantly became nervous. Sayel decided that the direct approach would be best. She handed Kali the paper and let her read it for several seconds, watching as the other girl instntly turned red.

"You . . ." Sayel said slowly, "and Cadet Tamakari?"

Kali nodded. "Yeah," she said a little reluctantly. "It wasn't my idea—Yoshi wanted to test out her transporter."

"I am curious," Sayel said, "Which of you completed the drawing? It is quite . . . detailed."

With that, Kali grimaced a bit and stabbed an accusatory finger at the paper. "That," she said, putting heavy emphasis on the word, "wasn't either of us—it was Ayuiij."

"Ah . . . Cadet ch'Ishima—the flamboyant Andorian."

"The loud, flamboyant Andorian," Kali corrected, more than a hint of impatience coloring her tone. Then Kali started to look ashamed again, she appeared as it she wanted to ask Sayel if she were angry, but she fell silent instead.

Just then, the chime to the door sounded and Siyana walked in without an invitation. "Hi, Sayel's roommate," she said cheerily to Kali, ignoring Sayel for the moment. "I'm Siyana—I used to be Sayel's roommate too. Now I'm not."

Amused, Kali replied, "That, I gathered."

"Hello to you as well, Siyana," Sayel responded, uninvited. "This is Kali Samsara, Kali this is Siyana a'Kamara."

"Nice to meet you," Kali said hesitantly. Siyana returned an equivocal reply. After the two exchanged pleasantries, Sayel took the paper from Kali and thrust it into Siyana's hands.

"What?" Siyana asked, glancing down at the paper.

"Read," Sayel replied dryly—Siyana had absorbed enough Vulcan to read the paper. By the time Siyana's eyes had surveyed the entire first page, she was slack-jawed with shock. Then, she started laughing. "Who did this?" she asked finally.

"We are going to see them right now, are we not, Kali?" Sayel asked calmly.

"Uh . . . sure," Kali responed unenthusiastically.

The three made their way across the Academy living qaurters to the room shared by Ayuiij and Yoshi. Kali pressed the door chime, and a tall, light blue skinned Andorian answered the hail. Upon seeing Kali, the Nadorian hunched her shoulders and hissed at her, her yellow eyes seeming to glow demonically.

"Scary," Siyana commented in a tone which suggested that she meant precisely the opposite of her statement . . . or perhaps not precisely the opposite; Sayel recognized her tone as the one Siyana used when she felt that someone was being profoundly illogical or profoundly stupid.

"Oh, look, its Pointy!" Ayuiij ch'Ishima said, her eyes setting upon Sayel. "Did she figure it out or did you tell her?" she asked Kali.

"She figured it out," Kali answered flatly. "Are we going to have this entire conversation in the hall?"

"Yes," Ayuiij countered, then she crossed her arms across her chest dramatically. "So, what did you think of our satire?"

"She just learned that word last week!" someone, presumably Yoshi, shouted from inside the room. "'I do not know that word in Federation Standard'."

"You know what? Shut-up," Ayuiij responded amicably, without looking back at her roommate. "As in, zip it."

"You call this satire?" Siyana asked, disdain dripping from her voice.

Sayel thrust the paper at the Andorian, and when the other refused to take it, she folded it in two and stuck it between her folded arm and her stomach. Sayel could see the beginnings of a smile on her face.

"Mockery? Yes. Satire? No," Sayel remarked. "It was neither long enough, detailed enough, nor . . . inspired . . . enough to be satire."

"I think it ws 'inspired', Pointy," Ayuiij remarked.

Sayel sighed, her only outward sign of impatience. She supposed that she could try to reason with the Andorian to get her to stop calling her that innane name . . . but she would probably have more luck with a Tellerite. Sayel didn't know about Andorians in general, or even if any generalization could be made, but this particular Andorian did not seem as if she ruled her life through logic. If not logic, then she should use something that Ayuiij would understand a little more directly . . . like violence. With barely a pause, Sayel replied, "And I think I ought to break you in half if you use that term in referring to me anytime in the near future."

Ayuiij responded to that by falling backwards into her room and onto the floor, shaking with laughter. "My life is complete!" she shouted. "I was threatened by a Vulcan."

"Half-Vulcan," Sayel corrected, walking into the room and regaurding Ayuiij with her arms folded across her chest.

"It still counts," Ayuiij argued. She quickly added: "And I won't call you that unless I actually want you to break me in half."

"I don't think it's the genes that count," Siyana said, albeit too quietly for Ayuiij to hear.

Ayuiij cocked her head and looked up at Sayel. This time, she spoke in a serious tone. "Hey, we didn't really offend you, did we?"

"Who's we?" Yoshi muttered.

"Hey, you were in on it, too."

Sayel brushed away their concenrs with a wave of her hands. "No, I am not offended, but most Vulcans would be."

Seeing the moment diffused, Kali hurriedly stepped around Ayuiij to speak with Yoshi—who was working semi-diligently at her computer and successfully ignoring everyone else except at selected intervals. Kali introduced Siyana and the three began talking while Ayuiij continued to speak with Sayel.

"You're half Vulcan and half-Betazoid, that's one really emotional species and one, you know, not so emotional species. Wasn't that, I don't know, weird?" Ayuiij gave a brief, self-depreciating laugh. "Or confusing, maybe?"

"When I was younger, it was not a factor—and it did not use to be confusing. It is, however, much more confusing now."

"Why?" Ayuiij asked, seeming genuinely interested.

"_That_, is a somewhat complicated tale," Sayel reflected.

"You don't want to talk about it?"

"No, I am willing to talk about it, it is simply a rather complicated tale."

"Well, start uncomplicating it." With that brisk command, Sayel started explaining some of her recent . . . disenchantment with Vulcan philosophy.

Listening to her with some fascination, Ayuiij shook her head. "How did you ever begin to throw out Vulcan philosophy like that? I mean, you were born into it—what made you think of all this stuff.

"That, Ayuiij, is a tale for another time," Sayel said. "It would be rather pointless for me to tell you this now—but I believe that at a future date, it will be far more beneficial to you and to me."

"What the hell does that mean?" Ayuiij asked.

__

It means that telling you I saw an Underlier, a great being in Vulcan mythology, will only result in you thinking me mad. Later, if you should come to respect my counsel, I will gladly tell you all. "It means . . . be patient and I will tell you what you want to know."

Ayuiij sort of shook her head in disgust. "This better be good," she commented.

The four of them soon exited Ayuiij's and Yoshi's room and headed for the café. They got their respective breakfasts and sat down when Akira showed up. To those that did not already know her, Siyana introduced Akira, a dark-skinned Trill who even taller than Ayuiij, who was now the quietest and most reserved of Sayel's present group of companions. They talked about their classes and the new self-defense program when they were joined by three other cadets, all of whom Sayel knew. Elora Tereza and Lael Daemas were among the ones Sayel knew best, and the other was Jori Sadik, a cynical yet bright student who seemed to know more about martial arts than her insignificant age warranted. Sayel knew that Andorians were raised to fight, and Sayel had acquired some of her vast knowledge concerning the martial arts through unorthodox and unintentional ways, but Jori didn't have a compelling reason to know what she knew. In addition, she was stronger and faster than any teenage girl had a right to be.

With the addition of the new arrivals, the table grew exponentially louder. Before this experience, Sayel hadn't known it was possible for nine people to make as much noise as these nine were making. 

"How did you learn to speak Vulcan so well?" Sayel asked Kali. "I know that your fluency is not complete, but you have already mastered the accent. Such a thing is rare."

"Uh . . . actually, I was born on Vulcan."

"Indeed?" Sayel asked, "but at some point you moved to Earth?"

"Antarctica," Kali revealed with a wry smile. "Hence penguins." Kali looked up and appeared to be glaring nostalgically at nothing at all. "The only good thing in that damned continent. I only stayed there for a few years, my parents were research scientists." Kali shrugged. "When they died, I went to live with my brother in the mid-western U. S. A."

Yoshi seemed to think that living in Antarctica was quite amusing; she told Kali so with much enthusiasm. "Antarctica is cold," Siyana commented. "And hell is hot."

"You're good," Jori told Siyana, "Do you enjoy stating the obvious?"

Siyana glared at Jori. "Shut up, Jori," she said, none too nicely. "I was just going to say that some place cold shouldn't be sent to hell."

Yoshi and even Ayuiij visibly rolled their eyes as Akira shook her head in bemusement. "That's what you get for being a smart ass," Kali told Siyana. Siyana promptly stuck her tongue out at the other girl.

"Actually," Elora said, for the first time entering the conversation. "Human artists in the Middle Ages depicted hell as frozen."

"That's right," Jori said, leaning back in her chair and looking to the ceiling—as if such a pose would help her remember the elusive bit of information she was searching for. "Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Iscariot were all frozen in the innermost circle of hell."

"You read the _Inferno_?" Yoshi asked Jori and Elora, "Why?"

Jori just shrugged. "It was the only interesting one of the three, though. The other two were boring as sin," she said, a glint entering her eyes.

Everyone at the table except Sayel and Elora groaned on queue. "I didn't actually read it," Elora admitted. "But Celosia did."

"Celosia would be?" Yoshi asked.

"Tereza's last host," Elora said. For a moment a brief touch of sorrow touched her dark features. Just for that instant, Sayel let her more imaginative side emerge. _She looks like an elf,_ Sayel thought to herself. With her somewhat dark, closed features, and high and almost regal looking eyes, alongside her very straight, red-brown hair that now framed either side of her face she reminded Sayel of an elf . . . or perhaps a sprite. In the more interesting mythologies, elves were tall, fair creatures, but Elora was small. But truly, Siyana was the sprite among them, with the mystery and mystical powers to complete the image. Sayel wondered if Siyana would ever speak of her telepathic and telekinetic abilities, or would she let them atrophy and fall into shadow. None of Sayel's other companions were mystical—Cadet Te'yas had a hint of mystery about her, but she was very unassuming, and Jori seemed to enjoy obfuscation, but the rest all were rather normal . . . or they were normal in all of the abnormal ways and abnormal in all of the normal ways. Sayel wasn't quite sure what that meant. _Perhaps not mystical, but more mythological?_ If anyone was anything as this table, Ayuiij ch'Ishima was a griffin. She had the strong powerful build, and seemed very protective of those she cared about. When Sayel had talked to her earlier, the girl had hunched her shoulders and hissed—either like a angry cat preparing for defense, or like a bird puffing itself up, trying to appear larger than what it really was. As for Akira . . . Kali was fond of cursing her 'tree-like tallness', so perhaps Akira could be a naiad, a tree-spirit. _A willow naiad, _Sayel thought with private, inner amusement,_ she could be a willow naiad—gracious and quiet, but also tall and strong._ She still didn't know what the others could be—none of their personality or physical traits jumped out to be recognized.

"It is interesting that Dante thought a traitor the worst kind of sinner," Sayel commented, speaking nothing of her fanciful thoughts.

"They are," Ayuiij said firmly, her yellow, predatorily eyes flashing. Leaving nothing up to chance, she repeated herself. "They deserve death, of the worst kind anyone could imagine." Her eyes continued to gleam. "Not of anyone," she corrected herself, "most people are too nice, _what_ I could think up would do."

As Sayel glanced about the table, she saw Elora, Lael, and Kali appear rather intimidated, and Yoshi looked as if she thought Ayuiij was insane. To Sayel's not-quite surprise, Siyana was nodding in agreement. Akira didn't voice an opinion, and Sayel couldn't quite read her open yet unrevealing features. Jori was ripping her napkin to shreds as she nodded, "Yeah, everyone hates a Benedict Arnold."

"But he betrayed everybody," Yoshi argued. "Which just makes him worse."

"Or better?" Sayel asked. "Because his loyalties were to no one? Or worse, because his loyalties were to no one? History does not speak kindly of mercenaries." 

"Especially mercenaries who weren't supposed to be mercenaries and swore an oath," Jori said, her tone rather disagreeable. "The British should have shot him for being a traitor, helpful or not."

Yoshi shot Jori a skeptical look. "Yeah, right," she said derisively. "No one would do that . . . except for maybe the Klingons. But they shouldn't have trusted them."

"Okay . . ." Ayuiij said with a nervous chuckle. "For those of us who don't know what you're talking about?"

"Benedict Arnold was an Englishman who fought for the Americans, then went back over to the British side and betrayed his former allies—the American Revolutionary War," Sayel explained.

"Only the Americans call it that," Kali said.

"And history is written of the victors," Sayel responded. "We could also call Americans the 'people of the United States of America' but I shall not. It is more efficient to say 'Americans'."

"And who the hell wants to be politically correct, anyway?" Yoshi muttered.

"Uh, the people who lost," Siyana suggested with a smile. She seemed to enjoy thwarting others' logic.

"We can tell _Yoshi's_ an American," Jori said, not appearing to disagree with Yoshi or Sayel.

"Yeah, so we won all the wars, so what?"

"And you also supplied the world with Colonel Green," Jori said condescendingly. "Who killed about 600 million people in World War Three, not to mention the Eugenics Wars—"

"Who's Colonel Green?" Siyana asked, prompting a look of disgust or shock from everyone present except Sayel. "Hey," she said, after seeing all of their expressions. "I'm new to the quadrant."

"And that's your only excuse," Jori said, a little harshly. "He's only the most evil man in history. He's worse than the Borg, for crying out loud!"

"Worse than the Borg drones, perhaps not the Queen herself," Sayel remarked, a bit introspectively. "I wonder how such a creature exists . . . ."

"I wonder about how to kill her," Ayuiij grunted. Then her eyes got a mischievous look. "You know what they say . . . if the Borg assimilated Vulcan, how would anyone ever know the difference?"

This prompted a muffled burst of laughter from everyone at the table—except Jori who laughed aloud, and Sayel and Kali who didn't laugh at all. "How about the assimilation tubules?" Kali asked with a sarcastic edge as she glared across the table at Ayuiij.

"Indeed," Sayel said, keeping the note of annoyance firmly out of her voice. But Ayuiij wouldn't have noticed anyway, she was too busy giggling at her own joke. She turned to Yoshi who was sitting beside her and held a clenched fist up to Yoshi's neck—as if her arm held the Borg machinations.

"'I am Dyslexic of Borg, resistance is futile, you will be ass-laminated'," Ayuiij crowed. Yoshi laughed as she swatted away Ayuiij's hand. "I can't claim credit for it," she said between laughs. "I actually saw it painted on the hull of a Starfleet shuttlecraft once, right after the Borg engagement."

Jori got up from her seat and headed toward the door, still laughing a little. Right before she exited, she spun around. "I've got class, and so do all of you, so you may want to leave," she suggested, before spinning fully around and heading out the door.

Sayel rose, as did her companions. As they headed for class, Sayel reflected that it had been an interesting and satisfactory morning—she could expect the rest of the day to follow in the same trend.

A. N.: A friend of mine gave another friend of mine that bumper sticker for Christmas. I thought it was humorous. And, yeah, if you were wondering what actually _happened_ in that chapter . . . so am I.


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Note:  Gee, what a delay.  I am glad to be able to work on this story, it has been such a long time!  I am finally getting to the plot of this happenstance, and I bet you were wondering if there were one!  I have a surprising number of reviews for a story that doesn't have much to do with any of the series, and I am very grateful.  Thanks again to the real life inspirations for a good deal of my characters and especially to the people behind Akira, Ayuiij, Siyana, and Kali—they have been most supportive about this endeavor.   I hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer:  _Star Trek_ is not mine—but many of the characters and ideas in this story are in the sense of them coming to be in my mind, but I claim no ownership as such.

Chapter 4 

            Akira Te'yas watched her companions at the table in the rec room.  People-watching was one of her favorite pastimes, and most humans and persons at the Academy were oblivious enough not to notice her doing it.  Or, of course, they didn't care.  For once, Kali, Yoshi, Elora and Siyana had a legitimate excuse to be sitting at the table—they were eating lunch.  Often enough, the group simply coalesced to sit at the table and do nothing but talk, argue, and tell inane puns, jokes, and stories.

            "I hate that class," Kali said passionately.  Generally self-described as apathetic, Kali rarely said anything with "zest" or enthusiasm, but now she repeated the sentence, "I really hate that class."

            "Come on now," Yoshi said, her voice unusually conciliatory.  "No need to be redundant."

            "Oh, but there is," Kali fired back.  Siyana smirked darkly at Kali.

            "What class are you talking about?"  Elora asked, sympathy flowing through her soft voice.

            "Elora, what _other class would I be talking about?"  Kali said, rather condescendingly._

            "I don't know!"  Elora protested, taking no offense.  "You hate calculus and—"

            "What does Kali hate more than anything else?"  Yoshi asked, interrupting Elora.  When Elora continued to look confused and somewhat exasperated, Yoshi slammed an emphatic hand down on the table.  "Physical activity!"

            The look Elora gave Kali was not quite that a look of scorn or annoyance—but it wasn't a look one would appreciate being given either, Akira reflected.  Kali amused her—Elora was entertaining as well, but not quite in the same way.  Yoshi was _funny—she had even less of the "accidental" amusement that Kali or Elora provided.  "Kali," Elora said severely. _

            "You know what," Kali said threateningly (although she was not about to deliver a threat).  "Because Commander freaking Keating thinks I would get myself killed, I have to practice with Sayel three times a week."

            Yoshi chortled.  "He-he-he—I bet she kicks your ass every day!"

            Kali glowered at her.  "I hate you," she informed her friend brightly.

            Siyana and Akira both laughed at this, but Elora shook her head.  "Ayuiij tutors me and Jori tutors Lael—you aren't the only one."

            "Yeah . . . but," and here Kali dropped her voice a little.  "Sayel's intimidating."

            "And Ayuiij and Jori aren't?"  Yoshi scoffed. 

            "Ayuiij is insane," Kali corrected, smiling for the first time.  "Jori is down-right scary, but Ayuiij is just insane."

            "Jori can be scary," Siyana agreed, "But that's just cause she acts like she doesn't give a crap.  Sayel's . . . friendly."

            "Sayel is friendly," Kali agreed quickly.  "Unnaturally so for a Vulcan, but she's still intimidating."

            "Oh, brother," Yoshi groaned.  "You're all a bunch of wusses."

            "Right," Kali shot back, "why do you think we're intimidated?"

            "Where is Sayel?"  Elora asked earnestly, "doesn't she normally eat with us now?"

            When no one answered her, Akira did.  "Yes, I saw her at the end of class—she was talking to Cadet Trusk."

            "He-he-he," Kali cackled, unconsciously imitating Yoshi.  "Arguing with him, you mean."  Akira just shrugged.  Trusk liked to shout, but Sayel seemed to have mastered the art of raising her voice without sounding overly emotional.

            Just then, Sayel strode in through the door with her easily distinguishable purposeful walk.  She instantly walked over to the chair Siyana gestured for her to take and sat down between Kali and Siyana.

            "Arguing with Trusk?"  Siyana asked sweetly.  Then she spoiled the illusion by dissolving into mischievous laughter.

            Sayel arched an eyebrow at her.  "That would have been a generous description," she admitted, rising again to get something from the replicator.

            "Let me guess," Yoshi said, pitching her voice loud enough so Sayel could hear—although, because Sayel was a Vulcan, that was probably not necessary.  "He said something stupid and you couldn't help but argue with it?"

            "A failing I find that most Vulcans have with the perpetually illogical," Sayel acknowledged.  She returned to her seat with a tray.  She paused and stared a moment at her salad.  "Tell me, Kali," she said, her voice somewhat dry.  "Do you think non-replicated food is better than replicated food?"

            "It depends on whose making it," Kali rejoined, smiling.  "I can't cook."

            "I can," Yoshi interrupted.  "And replicated food is inferior," she said, as if pronouncing judgment on it.  She even shot an accusatory glare at the food in front of her.

            "How can it be inferior?"  Siyana asked, disdain at her companions' illogic coloring her voice.  "It's genetically identical."

            "But do you think it is more real?"  Sayel asked.

            "It can't be," Siyana argued.  "It's exactly the same thing."

            "I suppose you could argue that a non-replicated _meal_ is more real," Kali said, her eyes fixed elsewhere.  _Or, perhaps, on itna__, as Siyana would say, Akira thought, amused by the philosophic change of conversation.  "Not the food itself, but the meal—the concept of it."_

            "Ah—more real like the object is more real than its reflected image?"  Sayel mused.

            "Wouldn't have come up with that, but yes," Kali responded.

            "You come up with weird questions," Siyana said, facing Sayel.

            "Thank you, Siyana," Sayel said in such a way that suggested she was rather more insulted than gratified.

            "I didn't mean it like that, but you're always . . . philosophical _and_ obscure."

            "And you are always enigmatic," Sayel challenged as Yoshi stole a crouton from her salad.  "You are welcome," she told the girl.

            "That takes the fun out of stealing," Yoshi grumbled.

            "Enigmatic?"  Siyana said, her eyes lighting up.  "I like being enigmatic."

            "Yeah, but it sucks for everyone else," Yoshi commented.  "Me, I'm an open book.  Do you ever wonder what I'm feeling?  The answers is no."

            "Or moops," Kali answered slyly.  Yoshi and Kali then broke out in to laughter while everyone stared at them in confusion.  "It was on this—never mind," Kali said with a sigh.

            "You, my friend, are an _opened book," Sayel replied, ignoring the digression.  "But I doubt anyone could open it further if he tried."_

            To that, Yoshi agreed, "true enough."

            "I try to be a closed one," Kali said, almost mournfully.  She then shot a somewhat disgusted look at Yoshi.  "But _apparently I have crappy walls."_

            To this, Yoshi clapped her hands and laughed delightedly.  "Yeah," she said, laughing again.

            "What?"  Akira asked, curious.  "What about walls?"

            "Long story," Yoshi replied, still laughing.  When she saw she still had the attention of the group, she capitulated.  "Okay—this goes back to sophomore or junior year in high school, so don't expect me to remember all the details.  Kali, I and a friend or two of ours were in the bio room and I asked Kali something about some guy she liked."  Kali promptly turned red.  "I sort of forced her to tell me what it was, and then she was mad 'cause I got her to talk.  I told her it wasn't my fault that she had walls of cardboard or cheese or something."

            "Cheese?"  Sayel echoed wryly, a glimmer of a smile at her lips.  Elora looked somewhat disgusted.

            "Yeah, I don't remember."  Then Yoshi narrowed her eyes and glared at Elora.  "You got something against cheese?"

            "It's disgusting," Elora said, making a face.  "Eww."

            With a perfectly straight face, Sayel said, "'"Treason!" cried the speaker'."

            Kali laughed, but Siyana and everyone else gave Sayel a confused look.  After a moment of belated realization, Yoshi smiled.  "Oh, just got it, I'm slow—don't mind me!"

            "Speech to the Virginia Convention?"  Sayel asked.  "Patrick Henry?"

            "Right," Siyana said in such a way that communicated she didn't know what Sayel was talking about.

            "U. S. literature . . . and history," Kali informed her.  "Don't worry, he said it about six hundred years ago, it doesn't really matter now."

            And then Sayel, Kali, and Yoshi launched into a fairly short argument about how the speech really did matter, because if Patrick Henry hadn't made it, there would be no Virginian involvement in the Revolutionary War, probably no United States, then no League of Nations, no United Nations, and no United Federation of Planets.  Akira smiled at her friends, then gently told them that it was time to go to class.  A collection of weeping and gnashing of teeth ensued—from all but Sayel—but the entourage quickly left the rec room for their respective classes.

"You know," Kali said to Lael Daemas, "that man's insane if he thinks I'm going to teach myself this crap."

            Lael Daemas rested in the soft green grass, her head buried in a book.  The bright summer sun—without UV radiation—and a soft summer breeze—but no bugs—floated through the flowered fields.  "You know Sayel is coming," Lael remarked disinterestedly.  "She'll be here."

            As if on cue, the tall Vulcan walked through the holographic doors and into the convincing summer afternoon.  She held a staff in hand and wore traditional Vulcan workout clothes.

            "Where have _you been?"  Kali demanded, faking annoyance._

            "Scotland," Sayel replied, a bit of a challenge in her voice.

            "Oh," Kali responded ingeniously.  "Well, that's fun."

            _That is fun,_ Lael said, speaking into Sayel's mind while physically giving a little wave.  _Hi, Sayel.  Sayel turned to Lael and bowed a little, but choose to respond verbally:_

            "Hello to you as well, Lael."

            "You said something telepathically, didn't you?"  Kali asked, grumbling.  "I'm jealous."

            "Jealous?"  Sayel asked, sounding genuinely surprised as Lael went back to the book Siyana had leant her.  "That's hardly logical."

            "No, but it's not fair."

            "Kali," Lael muttered, disapprovingly—then smiled.  Lael was a much better telepath than she was an empath—thoughts were easy compared to the elusive nuances of emotion that flowed through the minds of all sentient creatures.  But her proclivity for telepathy didn't help her with people like Sayel—and incidentally, Yoshi—who tended to say exactly what they thought.  One had to dig much deeper to find the true motivations they had for various things.  Naturally, Lael wasn't extremely perceptive—not like Yoshi and Sayel who both had an annoying tendency to notice everything.  _I would say it's because Sayel's half-Betazoid, half-Vulcan, but what's Yoshi's excuse?  _

            "You know what's not fair," she said, putting down her book, "it's not fair that I fell into the weirdest group at the Academy.  I can't read Siyana well 'cause she's Kamari, I can barely read Sayel—and she's half-Betazoid, I can't read Jori because she's frickin' mysterious, and Ayuiij doesn't make sense."

            "You cannot read me well?"  Sayel interrupted, surprised.

            Lael scrutinized the other girl for a moment.  "I don't know, you feel _off somehow and I have no clue why."_

            "Way to be vague, Lael," Kali said, baiting her.

            "Not my fault!"  Lael exclaimed, throwing up her hands into the air.  "You want to tell me why?" she demanded.

            "I could," Sayel said, almost as she were still debating on the subject.

            "Want to share, then?"  Kali said, a trifle obnoxiously.

            Sayel gave her a look.  "Not especially, no.  But I will," she added, before either could say anything.  Not taking her eyes from Kali, she spoke: "I used to be a telepath of some skill—for either a Vulcan or a Betazoid."

            "Used to be," Kali said, patiently stating the obvious—she made a gesture that suggested continuation with her hands.

            "After an unexpected contact with an Underlier, I lost all of my telepathic and empathic senses and abilities."

            "An _Underlier," Kali exclaimed as Lael concentrated on what Sayel had said.  "You're kidding."_

            "What's an Underlier?"  Lael said, confused by Kali's reaction—the skepticism was pouring off her in waves.

            "A . . . thing in Vulcan mythology—I don't know, they're weird and appear to random people.  Unlocking mysteries of the universe that no one can remember afterward and all of that," Kali said, still staring at Sayel.

            "I saw no mysteries of the universe," Sayel said, completely seriously.  "But seven months ago, I could have showed you what I saw and you would have believed me—I could have showed either of you."

            "Oh, I believe that you saw it," Kali said.  "Maybe if it were someone else, but Vulcans tend not to lie or make things up.  I guess it wasn't a hallucination?"

            Here Sayel shook her head.  "Siyana saw it, too."

            "Oh." Kali said and was silent.  After a moment, she spoke: "And the odds of you both being crazy and hallucinating the same thing are . . . ?"

            "About as long as the odds of us actually encountering an Underlier," Sayel responded, seeming genuinely amused for a moment.

            "Well, that's weird," Lael pronounced for lack of anything else to say.

            "I think we established that," Kali replied, laughing a bit.  "Did it, I don't know, say anything to you?"

            "Nothing that I understand," Sayel commented.  "Enough—we came here to practice—let us practice."

            Lael returned to her book, and read contentedly for a few moments, hearing the sounds of staffs colliding.  Suddenly, she heard a curse, and a burst of emotion emanating independently from both Kali and Sayel.

            "Watch out!"  Sayel shouted, warning her.  Lael looked up just in time to block the air-born staff with her book.  Luckily, it clattered off her book and hit the ground, bouncing once before it was still.  Sayel looked degrees less amicable than she had when they had been speaking previously.

            "Geez, way to try to kill me!"  Lael said as Sayel bent over and picked up the staff.

            "My apologies," Sayel said coolly—then she promptly turned her attention to Kali.  "Have you practiced since we began?"

            "Yes!"  Kali retorted defensively.

            Lael looked up, wincing as she instantly perceived that Kali was lying.  Without even looking to Lael for confirmation, Sayel said: "Are you lying?"

            "Yes," Kali said, becoming less verbally defensive—but she also turned an intriguing shade of red.

            "Kali, this is not an option for you.  The commander has given you no choice whether you may take this class.  And if you do not study with me, you will fail."

            "You know what, maybe I don't care," Kali grumbled.

            Now Sayel turned very cold, and Lael couldn't help but watch as the two . . . dissented.  "Kali, you will get yourself killed.  That is why Commander Keating assigned you to Commander Hawkins' class—not for some gratuitous reason."

            "Well, if I get myself killed, that's my problem, now isn't it?" Kali asked, thoroughly annoyed.

            A flash of resounding anger sparked through Lael's mind from Sayel.  "Perhaps I would not trouble myself," her voice without any hint of sympathetic emotion whatsoever, "but you are likely to get your fellow officers killed as well.  If you wish to be so irresponsible, then you should not even be at the Academy."

            "Thanks, Sayel, maybe I'll just quit, then," Kali snapped.

            "An illogical decision, but it is yours to make," Sayel responded, refusing to yield.  With that comment, Kali tossed her staff down and fairly stalked out of the room.

            "That wasn't very nice of you," Lael said as Sayel very slowly knelt down to pick up Kali's discarded staff.

            "Good," Sayel replied.  "I was not trying to be nice—Kali doesn't need me to be nice, she needs a tutor, and she needs to be held responsible for her actions."

            "Maybe she doesn't want her friends to be on her case—we have instructors for that."

            This time, Sayel turned to Lael with very little patience."Perhaps we have different philosophies on friendship, Lael," she said in a voice devoid of sympathy.  "I do not value my friends based on them telling me what I want to hear, but what they think I should know.  And the truth is a good place to start."  With that, she ended the conversation and walked out of the room.

Kali was still steaming when she met Yoshi and Ayuiij in her room.  Yoshi was to introduce them to an archaic game that she wanted to turn into a mini-holodeck program—as well as show them the other she had been working on, based on a twentieth/twenty-first century role playing game.  Kali was there because she knew something about old style gaming systems—Ayuiij was there because she had nothing better to do and because Yoshi had told her that the game was a fighting game.

            "What's up with you?"  Yoshi asked, when Kali came through the door, still a little red.  "Aren't you supposed to be practicing with Sayel now?"

            "Yeah, well, we got into a disagreement."  Kali briefly described it and got a snort of disgust from Ayuiij.

            "You're both stupid," Ayuiij said, continuing to follow Yoshi's directions and setting up the gaming system.

            "Yeah, well, I'm ignoring you," Kali said, briefly angered by her words.  Yoshi's eyebrows just arched in the way that suggested she didn't quite agree with Ayuiij . . . but she also thought something that Kali probably wouldn't like.

            "You're going to tell me I'm being an idiot, aren't you?"  Kali said, feeling defeated.

            "I wasn't going to tell you anything," Yoshi said dismissively.  "Not if you don't want to know and you'll get all angry about it."

            "No, I want to know what you think," Kali said reluctantly.

            Yoshi looked up at Kali after starting up the computer system.  "So maybe Sayel wasn't being particularly nice, but she wasn't being mean either."

            "And she was right?"  Kali asked, almost bitterly.

            Yoshi smiled ruefully.  "I was getting there," she replied.  "_Lael_ could kick your ass."

            "Thanks, Yoshi," Kali muttered, feeling worse.

            "Go apologize if you see her and Sayel won't care," Ayuiij advised, "it would be illogical to hold a grudge, wouldn't it?"

            "Sure . . . ." Kali said.  "And she's all philosophical and whatever—she believes whatever Elora believes, doesn't she?"

            "Yeah," Yoshi said.  "They talk about it enough—and they quote from some book of Elora's religion _in Trill so no one else knows what the hell they're talking about."_

            "I don't think that's why," Kali said, "I think they just read it in that language, and they speak the language, so it's logical to quote in that language."

            "I thought you were mad at her, so why are you defending her?"  Yoshi said in an intentionally petty tone of voice.

            "Okay, I'll go talk to her!"  Kali said, getting up while glaring at both Yoshi and Ayuiij—she walked out of the room.

            "So what's this game called anyway?"  Ayuiij asked.

            "Uh, the one I already made, or the fighting one?"

            "Either—both."

            "The roll playing game is called Zelda©--I already showed it to Sayel and Jori for a few minutes and they looked interested."

            Ayuiij snorted.  "Is Jori interested in anything?"

            "She seems to like violent things," Yoshi said dryly.  "Maybe like you!"

            Ayuiij snickered a bit, and Yoshi went on to say that they could save the role-playing game until after Kali got back.  Fortuitously, the door chime sounded.  Yoshi reached over, turned on the ancient "TV" and then grabbed a tricorder she had rested on Kali's desk.  She pointed toward the door, punched a variety of keys, and the tricorder made a series of beeps.  Yoshi stabbed a final key and the door opened, leaving Ayuiij staring at her, impressed.  "I'm lazy," Yoshi said with a shrug.

            Their visitor slowly poked his head in the door, leaning half-way over before spotting the two in the middle of the floor toward the other side of the room.  He wore a typical cadet's uniform, but it was the medical Academy's uniform rather than the one Yoshi and Ayuiij currently sported.  As it was, Yoshi had never seen him a day in her life.  "Know him?"  Yoshi asked Ayuiij. 

            "Unless I was unconscious when we met, no," Ayuiij said quite seriously before earning a look of incredulity/disdain from Yoshi.  Then the Andorian broke out into laughter.

            "Well, what do _you want?" Yoshi asked the stranger as she smiled reluctantly at Ayuiij's antics._

            Both of the strangers eyebrows went up and he took a step in the room, allowing the doors to close behind him.

            "Hey, no one said you could come in," Ayuiij said in a spirit of quarrelsomeness.

            "You were being rude," the stranger announced dryly and with a slight accent, "I decided that I could return the favor in some small way."

            Ayuiij's eyebrows shot up and she laughed a little.  But Yoshi only continued to look annoyed.  "And you are here why . . . ?"

            "This is Sayel's room—I had expected that she or her roommate would be here."

            "Well, she isn't," Yoshi informed him condescendingly.

            The stranger tipped his head and fairly glowered at Yoshi, and that was when Ayuiij saw a hint of the elfin ears, and noted the blond hair and blue-green eyes.  Something about him sounded familiar, and Ayuiij frowned, trying to remember what it was.  _Was it something Siyana said . . . ?_

            "Indeed," he snapped, his Scottish accent deepening.  "Would you happen to know where she was?  Never mind, I shall find her later!"  With that, he turned away sharply and hit the door release.

            "Oh, wait . . . you're elf-boy!"  Ayuiij exclaimed, waiving her arms in frustration as she tried to remember what Siyana had said.  "Siyana met you on Vulcan with Sayel . . . . what is your name . . .?  Arrg.  Dominic, that's it, it's Dominic.  Sayel's probably in the rec room nearest here."

            "Thanks ever so," he replied dryly, walking out of the room with some amount of gusto.

            When Ayuiij returned her attention to Yoshi, she found herself the subject of a fierce glare.  "What?" she asked defensively.

            "You told him where Sayel was," Yoshi grumbled, fiddling with one of the game controllers.

            "So . . . ?  Siyana knows him and I guess Sayel does too."

            "Still," Yoshi insisted, but try as she might, Ayuiij could not get an explanation of what this "still" meant.  Deciding she didn't care anymore, Ayuiij pointed at the thing Yoshi and Kali had referred to as a "television screen". 

            "What is this?" she asked as a colorful picture appeared on the screen.

            Yoshi waited a few moments, selecting an option that said "Arcade mode" on the screen.  A moment later, the picture changed to reveal small boxes with what appeared to Ayuiij to be heads—and just the heads—of various small people . . . or she thought they were people.  As her eyes examined the screen, she saw that one individual had some sort of mask, another appeared to be made from _metal_, and still others seemed to be various animals, some of which Ayuiij knew the name to, some of which (like the kangaroo or the raptor) she had never seen before.

            Yoshi's eyes fairly gleamed as she grinned at the screen.  "This," she pronounced with some pride and some glee, "is Tekken©."

Kali had joined Akira, Sayel, and Siyana in the rec room, where they were in the "usual" location they inhabited in their mutual downtime.  She had begun a somewhat labored apology but, as Sayel saw that Kali was apologizing, she had interrupted her speech to say "all is forgiven—won't you join us?" and that was that.  Sayel was not one to dwell on the mistakes of the past, and she was rather impressed that Kali had both the sense, courage, and humility to apologize to her.  _And one does need all three_, Sayel mused as they carried on with their original conversation.  _I have seen many with the sense and courage to know that they have need of forgiveness, but they would not allow themselves to be humbled._

            "Speak of the devil and you see his horns," Sayel blurted out, interrupting Siyana and surprising all three of her companions.  She gathered herself fairly quickly and gazed at the object of her surprise with raised eyebrows, wondering if he had heard her.

            "What devil?" Kali asked cheerfully.  She was in a quite better mood now.  "Are you anthropomorphizing things again, Sayel?"

            "What does that have to do with anything?" Siyana asked her.

            Akira laughed, "Kali just wanted to use that word."

            "And if I were anthropomorphizing anything, it would be _you_, Kali—seeing as you have the name of a Hindu god."

            "I _hope_ you aren't talking about me," Dominic said as he strode over to their table.  (So he had heard her.)  "Though, sense it gave Kali here the chance to use anthropomorphizing, perhaps I'll forgive it.  I do say," he went on, "the way that girl—the Terran gal, not the Andorian—reacted to me, you might have thought I was the devil, or at least one of his minions."  He said most of it rather thoughtfully, and he seemed somewhat bemused by the situation.  "She was frightfully rude."

             "Well now," Kali said, not missing a beat, "before you mentioned 'not the Andorian' I didn't know which you were talking about.  Yoshi and Ayuiij are both 'frightfully rude' at times.  Not that I even know who you are."

            "Hi, Dominic," Siyana said cheerfully, smiling up at him.  "It's good to see you—I didn't know you were planning to enter the Academy."  
            "Nor did I—and it is good to see you too, although I rather knew you at least were here."

            "Akira, Kali—this is Dominic Hawkins.  Dominic, this is Kali Samsara of Earth and Vulcan, and Akira Te'yas of Trill."

"It's a pleasure to meet the both of you," Dominic said.  Then, because he was Dominic, he cut to the chase and turned to Sayel.  "Sayel, may we talk for a minute?"

            Instead of responding, Sayel merely got up and walked around the table, nodding at her three friends that she would be back.  As they stepped outside the rec room, she heard Kali give a gusty sigh and Siyana say: "Is it just Scottish people that sound cool?  When I first met Dominic, I thought the Terran accent was so cool.   But no one else talks like he does."

            "Scottish is cool," Kali said mournfully, "I tried to fake a British accent for a while."

            And that was all Sayel could hear before the door shut to the rec room, leaving  them standing out in the hall alone.  Dominic looked at her and raised his eyebrows, his expression questioning.  Sayel just shrugged and said dryly, "What can I say to appease you, Dominic?—the Scottish accent appears to be universally irresistible."

            He laughed easily then, and that made Sayel relax a bit herself.  "Friends of yours, then?"

            "Yes, Akira is Siyana's roommate and Kali is mine—but they are, as you would say, 'gold'."

            "Gold, eh?"  Dominic asked, then he slapped his leg enthusiastically.  "Sayel, there's this chap that you have simply got to meet.  He's one of those Kamari folk—Aelon a'Emman—and he's nobility back on Kamara and he is just our sort.  Oh and there's a Terran chap by the name of Joshua that you'll like—but look here," he said, interrupting himself.  "More about that later.  Why on earth didn't you tell me?" he demanded.  "Come on Sayel, Starfleet?  _Starfleet_?  That was my dream, not yours."

            Sayel blinked, covering her surprise.  "When we were children, certainly . . . ."

            "No," Dominic cut in, "always.  I just heard that it was "illogical" so many times I stopped mentioning it.  I never stopped thinking about it.  And after our practice went to seed, I planned on the Academy.  But I wasn't expecting a call from my father saying that you had visited him at home and had left a message for me—_and_ that you were at the Academy.  Oh wait, I know, Siyana talked you into it."

            "She suggested it, I did not need to be convinced."  Sayel held up a hand to stop his response.  "I am sorry, Dominic.  I should have told you and I should not have left Vulcan when I did—"

            "Oh _that_," he said scornfully.  "You could have left sooner, if you ask me.  By the time I got out of there I was already spitting fire."

            "Then, I should have told you about it," Sayel said, curbing her impatience.  "As it is, why are you attending the medical academy—you have the title of Healer."

            "I'm only in the four year program," he said.  Then his eyes widened a little with remembrance.   "_Sayel_—did you hear about what happened?"

            "What happened where?"  Sayel rejoined.

            "At the Vulcan Embassy!"

            "There is no need to shout, Dominic.  And if you insist upon being vague, it is unlikely that I shall ever find out."

            He skewered her with a glare.  "Hilarious," he muttered.  "But look, a Terran gal—one of ours—was murdered."

            Stunned, Sayel was completely silent for a moment.  _Murder?__  That has not happened on Earth in years—and certainly not at the _Vulcan_ Embassy._  "One of ours, a Starfleet officer?"

            "Yes," Dominic said unhappily.  "I had wondered whether it was an assassination—"

            "It was not?"

            "No, no—she was only an ensign and no one can see why anyone would have wanted to kill her.  Starfleet's befuddled—they aren't acting all _mysterious_ though, you know, when the ensign is really Starfleet Security or a plant or—"

            Sayel had barely seen how it happened.  One moment, Dominic was talking to her, the next moment, Akira was crashing into him, cutting off his words and knocking him to the floor.  Beyond mere confusion, Sayel looked first to Akira—who it had appeared fell _backward_ into Dominic—and then Sayel looked at the wall Akira had come _through_.

            "What on earth?" Dominic asked as he helped Akira to her feet.  "You came from nowhere."

            "I . . . I don't know what happened."  Akira cast an uneasy glance at the wall Sayel was still staring at, in a sort of well-controlled astonishment.

            "Sayel—what are you staring at?" Dominic asked, now becoming uneasy at the expression on Sayel's normally calm features.

            Hesitantly, Sayel reached out a hand and touched the wall, half-expecting her hands to pass through it.  But no, her fingers brushed the cool, not-quite smooth surface.  She withdrew her hand immediately and straightened up.  "Akira . . . you just fell  . . . _through _the wall."

            "I . . . know that," Akira said, surprising Sayel by laughing—_a nervous laugh,_ she realized.  

            Dominic couldn't resist touching the wall, and as he did so, Kali and Siyana flew out of the rec room, saw them and halted their mad dash.

            "Did you see that?" Siyana asked.

            "Now _that's_ impossible!" Kali said, as if she were torn between amusement and anger.  "What the hell is going on?"

            Sayel was still staring at the wall with up-raised eyebrows.  "This is . . ." and she searched quickly through her vocabulary to find the proper word " . . . fascinating."

Author's Note:  Chortle—you _will _get an explanation next chapter.


End file.
